Skyrora Vehicle Assembly Building, which consists of 55,000 square feet of the factory floor and office space, along with a 67,000 sq ft yard large enough to contain the entire Skylark L launch complex and future Skyrora XL launch facilities for rehearsals, the integration works, and launch preparation, said the company. The site is expected to generate new job opportunities both in the North Lanarkshire area and in the rest of Scotland, with up to 100 high-skilled technical and business roles.
With the production of two Skyrora vehicles, which feature 3D-printed engine components – already underway at the Cumbernauld site, the company plans to increase that total to 16 per year once mass production begins.
“For the very first time, the UK has an asset capable of conducting full-stage structural and pressure testing and full-stage functional and cold flow testing. Conducting these tests domestically saves significant time and costs, and represents a key advantage for UK space efforts. As such, the maiden testing of the second stage of the Skyrora XL rocket can now be performed from UK soil, having been fully manufactured and assembled in-house. This includes the assembly of the 70kN engine, the most powerful commercially-produced liquid engine in the UK, which has been built using 3D-printed engine components,” said the company.
“This purpose-built manufacturing and assembly site, combined with the Midlothian testing facility, allows Skyrora to take direct charge of the development cycle in-house,” said Skyrora’s Head of Engineering, Dr Jack James Marlow.
“As a business, we now have a full set of domestic facilities to allow for close control of the quality and rapid development and testing of Skyrora XL ahead of its demo launch. The site will also allow us to further optimise manufacturing processes developed by our colleagues in Ukraine and scale-up launch vehicle production in the long term, enabling further expansion and growth in the future,” they added.
By 2030, Skyrora plans to conduct 16 launches per year from the Saxavord launch complex in the Shetland Islands alone, a site which has recently begun test exercises ahead of its planned rocket launches.
