Santa Maria to Host South Korean Rocket Launches with €15M Space Hub

Santa Maria’s skyline is about to gain a new feature: the bright plume of a South-Korean rocket. A long-term agreement between Innospace, a Seoul-based launch start-up, and the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC) puts Portugal’s smallest Azorean island on the global launch map, promising fresh investment, skilled jobs and louder debates on environmental stewardship.

What you need to know at a glance

• First orbital lift-off pencilled in for late 2026; suborbital dress rehearsals as early as spring 2026

• Contract runs through 2030, giving Innospace priority rights to the Malbusca pad

• €15 M earmarked for the Santa Maria Space Technology Centre, Portugal’s new space hub

• Agreement hailed as Portugal’s entry ticket to the club of orbital launch nations, yet met with lively local scrutiny on safety and ecology

A quick Atlantic launchpad emerges

Lisbon has chased a spaceport for years, but it took a South-Korean newcomer, the ASC licence and a willing regional government to turn the plan concrete. Malbusca, a cliff-ringed outcrop on Santa Maria’s southeast coast, offers wide ocean corridors, minimal air traffic and straightforward range safety for small launchers. The ASC—jointly owned by Portuguese firms Optimal Structural Solutions and Ilex Space—secured Portugal’s first spaceport licence from ANACOM in 2024, framing Malbusca as an open-access facility rather than a single-tenant base. Innospace’s signature merely accelerates that blueprint.

The deal: what Innospace gets, what Portugal gains

Under the six-year accord Innospace gains top-of-the-queue status for every pad slot between 2026-2030, complementing its sites in Brazil’s Alcântara and Australia’s Arnhem Land. The company will fly its HANBIT line of rockets—payload brackets from 90 kg to 1 300 kg—aimed at the surging small-satellite market. In return Portugal obtains a guaranteed launch cadence, technology transfer opportunities and an enlarged aerospace footprint inside the EU regulatory framework. Ricardo Conde, who heads the Portuguese Space Agency, calls the deal “a vote of confidence in the national strategy”, stressing that all launches will adhere to ESA-level safety protocols.

Santa Maria Space Technology Centre: from concept to concrete

Alongside the pad, a €15 M envelope—sourced from Portugal’s ESA subscription—is funding the Santa Maria Space Technology Centre on disused kart-track land. The campus will host mission control rooms, a clean-room hall for payload integration, and the landing infrastructure for ESA’s Space Rider, a reusable uncrewed vehicle scheduled to touch down on the island in 2028. Edisoft, already running a Galileo sensor station nearby, will plug the new hub into its network of ground assets, creating a one-stop shop for tracking, telemetry and data-downlink services.

Jobs, skills and euros: reading the economic ledger

Regional authorities estimate 150-200 direct jobs in engineering, logistics and IT once the site hits full stride. Multiplier effects on hospitality, rentals and maritime services could double that figure. Unlike past tourism-centric booms, the rocket trade may keep young Azoreans from migrating for work, say local economists. The government in Ponta Delgada is negotiating a revenue-sharing formula ensuring a slice of pad fees supports island infrastructure, from fibre-optic upgrades to port dredging, anchoring the project in broader blue-economy ambitions.

Local voices: hope, questions and the sound of engines

Not everyone cheers the countdown. Grass-roots collectives argue that rapid licensing raced ahead of robust environmental impact studies. Concerns span bird-nesting cliffs, potential fuel spills and maritime exclusion zones that could squeeze small-scale fisheries. A public petition demanding a binding referendum has gathered several thousand signatures. Proponents counter that non-toxic propellants, emergency corridors and ESA-style safety audits will keep risks low, and that the island—home to ageing demographics—needs new revenue streams. The coming months will see community briefings, with ASC promising to publish full noise-propagation data and flight-termination procedures.

Portugal v world: standing next to Brazil and Australia

Strategists view the Azores as a mid-Atlantic waypoint that complements, rather than competes with, equatorial Brazilian launches and sun-drenched Australian ranges. While Alcântara excels at geo-stationary transfers and Arnhem at sun-synchronous slots, Santa Maria can target high-inclination orbits without overflying dense populations. That geographical mix allows Innospace to give customers a menu of trajectories, shortening delivery queues. Portugal, meanwhile, positions itself inside Europe’s “New Space” ecosystem, plugging the continent’s gap for flexible, commercially run pads—an asset Brussels is keen to cultivate amid soaring demand for Earth-observation constellations.

What happens between now and liftoff?

Before the big orbital shot, engineers will stage a series of suborbital shake-downs next spring to validate telemetry links, ground handling and sea-recovery drills. Construction crews are laying road upgrades, pad flame trenches and a dedicated power substation to hold the island grid steady during countdown. Regulatory checkpoints still loom: each launch must clear a mission-specific licence, and the Portuguese Air Force will issue temporary airspace closures. If paperwork and weather align, late 2026 could see Portugal’s flag on a rocket fairing for the first time—an image many policymakers hope will signal that the country has truly joined the orbital age.