Proposed Canadian spaceports

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace, which has attempted one launch of its Hanbit-Nano rocket (a failure), has now signed a launch deal with the proposed Spaceport Nova Scotia, run by Maritime Launch Services.

Maritime Launch Services announced a strategic partnership with South Korean rocket developer Innospace. Under a new Letter of Intent (LOI), the two companies will evaluate hosting the HANBIT launch system at Spaceport Nova Scotia, potentially transforming the Atlantic coast into a primary North American hub for the South Korean firm.

Innospace’s first launch was from Brazil’s long unused Alcantera spaceport on its northeast coast. The company has also signed deals with Portugal’s proposed Santa Maria spaceport, two spaceports in Australia (Southern Launch and Equatorial Launch), and Norway’s Andoya spaceport.

This new deal in Nova Scotia is still preliminary, with the two companies having until the end of the year to finalize the specifics. For Innospace, it appears the company its trying to give itself as many spaceport options as possible. It can also launch from the government spaceport in South Korea, but that provides much more limited orbital flight paths, and presents scheduling difficulties.

For Maritime, this deal might finally get this spaceport off the ground. It was first proposed in 2016, offering satellite companies both a launch site and a Ukrainian-built rocket. That plan fell through when Russia invaded the Ukraine and the rocket became unavailable. Since then Maritime has struggled to convince rocket companies to use the spaceport, all to no avail. It signed some deals, but none has gone anywhere. This deal is its first with a rocket startup that has actually attempted a launch, though that launch was a failure.