A month after NordSpace said it had successfully static-tested its Canadian-built, fully integrated Taiga suborbital rocket at its Canadian Space Research Range in Ontario, the company has announced plans to build its own launch facility in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland and Labrador. (The community is located on the southeastern Atlantic shore of the province, just across from the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.)
Known as ‘Spaceport Canada’, the proposed St. Lawrence site will have at least two launch pads and a launch control centre, said Rahul Goel, CEO and Founder of NordSpace. It will be able to support the launch of the company’s Taiga suborbital and Tundra orbital rockets, both of which will use NordSpace’s in-house designed and 3D printed single-piece Hadfield engines.
“We chose this location after considering over a dozen sites across Canada to establish the spaceport, and considered over 20 factors ranging from orbital inclinations, distance from closest human settlements, provincial governmental interest and support, and community support, to local infrastructure and utilities, environmental considerations, and weather,” Goel told SpaceQ. “No location was perfect, but this one checked the greatest number of boxes for us.”
Asked why NordSpace would build its own launch facility when Maritime Launch Services (MLS) is building Spaceport Nova Scotia near Canso on that province’s Atlantic coast, Rahul Goel replied that his company had originally intended to use MLS’ site. “In fact, it was one of the reasons we started NordSpace, to take advantage of that opportunity,” he said. But “Over the past two years it became evident after conversations with the MLS team that, unfortunately, charting our own course would be necessary as the MLS business/operational model and state of the spaceport were not what aligned with our plans or what was marketed publicly.”
In documentation provided to SpaceQ, NordSpace said the community of St. Lawrence have “demonstrated a great degree of support”, though they didn’t provide details. They also stated that the province has been supportive and that they’ve working with working closely with Transport Canada.
As for adding extra work for NordSpace’s engineers? “The spaceport division of NordSpace does not interfere with our technical work on the rocket or space systems programs as it is managed entirely by a separate team within NordSpace,” replied Goel.
Meanwhile, NordSpace’s Canadian Space Research Range now has three engine test cells; one for vertical tests, and two for horizontal engine tests. “The newest engine test cell, named Darkhorse, is specifically designed to support our turbomachinery and orbital scale engines and help NordSpace transition from pressure fed systems to pump fed systems,” he said. “It is also optimized for longer duration burns (full duration qualification burns for orbital engines), and far more sophisticated data acquisition systems. We will be performing the first test using Darkhorse in April, and later in 2025 with our turbopump systems integrated.”
While NordSpace pushes ahead with these projects — including it says launches from Spaceport Canada by 2027 — it is also continuing work on its Taiga and Tundra launch vehicles. According to Goel, the technical work related to Taiga is “essentially complete, and we are now primarily focused on readying for launch in 2025,” he said. As for Tundra? “We expect our next major milestones related to our orbital engines in 2025 being the coupling of our turbopump systems, as well as mechanical tests of our thrust vector control systems,” said Goel.
