Rocket explodes at UK's new spaceport

The United Kingdom's newest spaceport, on the tiny Scottish island of Unst, has been rocked by a massive explosion after a rocket engine failed during testing by the German company Rocket Factory Augsburg, or RFA.

The enterprise hopes to eventually launch the UK's first vertical-takeoff rocket and was moving forward with the project on the island, which is part of the Shetland Islands, by conducting trials.

RFA said no one was injured in the incident at the SaxaVord Spaceport on Monday night. It also said the launch pad itself was not damaged.

The BBC said the explosion at the former Royal Air Force base was preceded by large flames and smoke "shooting horizontally from the bottom of the rocket" before the entire structure was engulfed in flames.

The spaceport, which only opened three months ago, has received approval from the UK's Civil Aviation Authority to start launching spaceships this year and is the first facility in Western Europe to be licensed to launch vessels vertically. It has approval to carry out 30 such operations a year and is expected to become a major part of the UK's participation in the space industry.

In addition to RFA, the German rocket-maker HyImpulse has expressed an interest in using the spaceport, as has United States aviation giant Lockheed Martin, and Edinburgh-based Skyrora.

However, the site has not yet completed a successful launch.

A spokesman for SaxaVord Spaceport said: "This was a test, and test campaigns are designed to identify issues prior to the next stage. We will work with RFA to understand and learn from the causes and support them as they move forward to the next phase of their preparations."

RFA has high hopes of building a European rocket company that might, one day, be capable of challenging Elon Musk's SpaceX and wants to use the 30-meter rocket it is developing to carry payloads into a low-Earth-orbit.

If Monday's test had been successful, all nine of the rocket's engines would have been fired up while the rocket itself would have remained on the ground.

The spaceport said its employees and those of RFA were never in any danger because everyone had been evacuated from the site before testing began. The spaceport added that it will fully cooperate with any official investigation into the failure.

The UK currently has lofty ambitions to become a leader in the global space industry and already has almost 50,000 people working in the sector at more than 2,000 companies worth a collective 17.5 billion pounds ($22.8 billion).

The UK's only other spaceport, in the county of Cornwall in southwest England, was the first to become operational but is not licensed to launch vessels vertically and instead puts them into orbit piggy-backed on an aircraft. The country also has several other spaceports under construction.