Private companies like SpaceX are taking on established space agencies. Germany is hoping to shore up its position by opening a spaceport on the North Sea.Satellite data is growing evermore crucial to a range of economic sectors, from digitalized industrial production to self-driving vehicles.
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This demand is pushing the international space race to take on new dimensions, particularly in the private sector. Companies like SpaceX, with its huge fleet of satellites and rockets, represent dangerous competition for established space-faring countries.
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Germany is hoping its construction of a new spaceport, expected to launch its first rockets in April, can better its position.
What will the new spaceport look like?
Germany's new facility will not be land-based, like the Cape Canaveral space station in the United States or Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
Instead, the spaceport will launch from a platform in the North Sea.
To start, Dutch company T-Minus will launch a rocket from the German-Offshore Spaceport Alliance (GOSA) mobile platform.
The launch pad will be built some 350 kilometers from the coast in the remotest corner of Germany's Exclusive Economic Zone. The Federation of German Industries (BDI) announced the location at a space congress in Berlin.
Each launch will be supervised by a control ship and a new multifunctional Mission Control Center in Bremen, Germany. The ship's hges: Celebrate Debasnana Purnima With These Wishes, Messages and Wallpapers of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra