Orbex to launch community consultation on relocating rocket flight monitoring 'antennas' from Sutherland Spaceport site at A'Mhoine to top of Ben Tongue
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The company behind the development of the £20 million Sutherland Spaceport is planning changes to its layout and design, the Northern Times has been told.
Space aviation firm Orbex, has been granted a 50-year lease by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) to build and operate the spaceport on a site at A’Mhoine peninsula, west of Tongue.
Full planning consent was granted in August 2020, with work on the site beginning in May this year. No completion date has been officially given.
But now Orbex is seeking to relocate sophisticated antennas, used to track the trajectory of rockets as they blast vertically into space carrying commercial satellites, from the main spaceport site to the top of 991ft high Ben Tongue.
Located around one and a quarter miles to the east of the Kyle of Tongue causeway, Ben Tongue is about five miles from the spaceport site as the crow flies.
Fresh planning consent will be required for the move and a Proposal of Application Notice (PAN) was last week submitted to Highland Council. A new community consultation will also be undertaken.
Chief of spaceport operations Lesley Still, who took up the role three months ago, said: “We are just starting the process so it is probably a little too early to say how long it will take but it is going to take additional time. We don’t perceive that as significant.”
Orbex, which is developing a 19-metre long orbital space rocket called Prime, inherited the design of the spaceport from HIE.
The planned complex, to go on a 12-acre site belonging to Melness Crofters Estate, comprises three areas - a Launch Operations Control Centre (LOCC) next to the site entrance; a launch site integration facility (LSIF) and ‘antenna farm’ or park 2km to the north west; and the launch pad just over a mile north of the LSIF.
Ms Still said: “At that point (when the spaceport was designed) no analysis had been done, nor had a vehicle, a rocket, been identified nor indeed a range service provider.
“We are required to follow the flight of the rockets and it became pretty clear when we looked at the designs that we wouldn’t be able to do that from anywhere on the main site. So we are proposing the relocation of that antenna park to the top of Ben Tongue, adjacent to existing telecom infrastructure, which will give us a much better trajectory oversight.”
The two spaceport antennas would be a third of the height of the tallest mast on Ben Tongue and as a result Orbex feels there would be no visual impact for the area. If planning consent is granted,the space firm hopes to improve the access track on the mountain.
Ms Still said that a specialist contractor would be monitoring the trajectory of rockets from Sutherland Spaceport. Planning consent has been given for up to 12 launches a year.
She added that the antenna park relocation would have added benefits in that it would reduce the footprint of the spaceport from what was originally envisaged, leading to less disturbance of peat.
After undertaking a survey, Orbex is also proposing to re-route the access track to the spaceport, which runs north-west from the A838, in a bid to avoid deeper areas of peat and cause less disturbance to water crossings.
“We are hoping that this will be seen very positively in the communities,” said Ms Still.
The PAN submitted by Orbex is not a planning application but a notice to the council that changes to the existing planning permission are being sought and advising of how the developer intends to engage with the community about the fresh proposals.
Highland Council has 21 days to confirm that it is happy with the consultation arrangements after which Orbex will submit a planning application, which will take some three months.
Orbex intends holding two community consultation sessions on December 5 and again on January 18 and will also be undertaking a maildrop of residents in the vicinity of the spaceport as well as putting up posters in local outlets.
“We are working to get all this right and we will make sure that the stakeholders are kept up to date with what we are doing,” said Ms Still.
