Esrange Space Center, the Swedish Space Corporation’s (SSC) site, is an international center for space and environmental research and located 45 km outside of Kiruna.
Researchers from around the world come here to conduct research on board sounding rockets, high altitude balloons and satellites. Esrange also has one of the world’s most active satellite stations for image-, TV-, weather-, GPS-, environmental- and other data receiving, as well as satellite control.
Since1966, more than 500 sounding rockets has been launched from Esrange. Europe's largest rocket researching weightlessness, took off from Esrange in March 2010.
Photographer: Maria Sirviö
More than 550 meteorological weather balloons have been launched from Esrange since 1974.
Photographer: Esrange Space Center
Here you can learn more about sounding rockets, stratospheric balloons used for research, as well as satellites used for communication and observing the Earth.