South Korean company to do sounding rocket launch next year from the Philippines
During his state of the nation speech last week, the president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced that the South Korean company Perigee — in partnership with the Philippines Space Agency — will launch one of its sounding rockets next year from an airport in the Cagayan Economic Zone located on the northern tip of his nation’s largest island Luzon.
Next year’s sounding rocket test launch will be a demonstration flight of a liquid-fueled rocket from the Philippines. It will carry a locally developed payload weighing up to 2 kilograms to an altitude of at least 5 kilometers.
The project will be implemented by PhilSA, the Department of Information and Communications Technology and the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority, together with Ascend International Gateway Inc. and South Korean company Perigee Aerospace Inc.
This deal between these four Philippine agencies and Perigee was originally announced in March 2026, but at that time no launch site was specified. The plan now is to do this small launch in Cagayan to demonstrate the potential of this economic zone as a spaceport location. Based on the map to the right, this location is excellent for orbital launches, especially on its eastern coast. That coast however has almost no development, so putting a spaceport there will be difficult simply because the most basic facilities (roads, utilities, etc) are not presently available.
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What is not commonly known is that there are seamounts around the equator;
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.T12A..05P/abstract
The Verna Seamount is shallow guyot/mesa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyot
I could see launch sites using those
The “deserted-ness” and lack of infrastructure of the eastern Cagayan coast is probably a net plus if the Philippines is looking to a long-term spaceport presence there. Infrastructure can be built out, but a lack of current neighbors means no present or future NIMBY problem. Boca Chica, TX, for example, also had limited infrastructure and not a lot of neighbors when SpaceX showed up.
True. Except that Boca Chica is in the U.S. where there is the right labor force and overall strong economic infrastructure to quickly build anything you want. The Philippines has much of this, but not to the same degree. Such a project would be more of a learning experience there.
Not impossible. Quite doable. But this fact is part of the equation.
“Such a project would be more of a learning experience there.”
The more such ‘learning experience(s)’ there are, the better of the Species will be.
Muirfield Seamount is actually near where Starship is now. It caused a partial ship grounding—being shallow.
I think Elon might have Teslabots building Starship facilities at some point—Boca relegated to testing