How the Lockheed Martin rocket was envisioned taking off from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands
By Jon Yeomans,
Published y The Times, 25 July 2026
Lockheed Martin has abandoned plans for a first space rocket launch from British soil after failing to find a partner for the project.
The US defence giant’s decision deals a blow to the £18.6 billion sector just as the government prepares to publish a revised space strategy.
Lockheed had teamed up with a US company, ABL Space Systems, for a potential launch from SaxaVord spaceport on Unst in the Shetland Islands. ABL was to provide the rocket for the launch, while Lockheed would have supported the project, with funding from the UK Space Agency.
But after the failure of a test flight in the US in 2024, ABL switched its business model from commercial launches to missile defence and changed its name to Long Wall. Lockheed’s attempts to find a new partner have come to nought.
“ABL Space Systems, which had been selected to provide launch services for the programme, announced that it was exiting the commercial launch market to focus on missile defence. Following that decision, Lockheed Martin and the UK Space Agency conducted an extensive assessment of alternative launch providers. However, none of the available options met the existing grant requirements in terms of programme objectives, anticipated benefits, and value for money,” said a Lockheed spokeswoman.
“As a result, Lockheed Martin and the UK Space Agency mutually agreed to close the grant programme.”
Lockheed was the biggest and most credible name in a crowded field of firms vying to kick-start space launches from Britain. The UK’s northerly latitudes are considered ideal for putting satellites into polar and sun-synchronous orbit (a type of near-polar orbit where the satellite synchronises with the sun).
The UK’s nascent space flight industry was dented in 2023 when a Virgin Orbit launch from Cornwall suffered an engine failure. The company later filed for bankruptcy.
Virgin Orbit had targeted “horizontal” launches with satellites piggy-backing on a jet to reach orbit.
Lockheed and others have sought to pull off more traditional “vertical” launches from the UK. But in February this year start-up Orbex collapsed into administration before it could complete a launch from Sutherland Spaceport in northern Scotland. It had soaked up £26 million in grants from the UK government and £29 million from the Scottish National Investment Bank before its collapse.
Edinburgh-based Skyrora remains in the running to pull off a UK launch. The company, which based its rockets on the UK’s scrapped Black Arrow programme of the 1970s, hopes to conduct a first launch of its Skylark L vehicle next year.
But the frontrunner is now the German company Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), which gained the first-ever licence to launch a private space vehicle from the Civil Aviation Authority in January 2025. It aims to launch from SaxaVord this summer.
In a written submission to the Scottish Affairs Committee last year, Lockheed explained its rationale for wanting to support space launches in the UK, noting that “there is a global shortage of launch capacity, which is expected to last until the end of the decade at the least”. But it warned that any scheme in the UK would require government support.
Demand for rocket launches has exploded in the last decade as companies rush to exploit satellites for a myriad of ground-based services, from telecommunications to mapping.
Lockheed said it “remains committed to supporting the growth of the space sector and continues to explore new launch opportunities and partnerships across the UK and Europe”. It employs 1,600 people directly in the UK and this month announced a $100 million investment in defence technologies in the UK and Europe. It has also invested £15 million towards the North East Space Skills and Technology Centre in Newcastle.
The US giant’s exit from the UK space race comes after the UK Space Agency was folded into the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) in April. Last week, Andy Burnham’s government folded DSIT back into an expanded Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST). Prior to this, DSIT had announced the publication of a revised space strategy “in the coming weeks”.
A government spokesperson said: “The government remains committed to supporting a thriving UK launch sector, with several launch operators continuing to target launches from UK spaceports, such as Saxavord in Scotland. We will set out further plans to develop the UK space sector in due course.”
See: Original Article
