Tag: Barracuda

Proposed Canadian spaceports

The competition between Canada’s two proposed spaceports heated up yesterday when the owner of Spaceport Nova Scotia, Maritime Launch Services, announced that the second launch had taken place there, this time by a rocket startup named T-Minus Engineering.

The launch took place at 11:54 AM, and the mission marked an important milestone in advancing the operational readiness of Spaceport Nova Scotia, critical infrastructure that will provide Canada with sovereign launch capability. The launch was conducted from Spaceport Nova Scotia under approved regulatory and safety frameworks. The demonstration strengthened coordination among launch site teams and stakeholder partners, while refining launch operational procedures and the safety and security systems that govern all activities at the spaceport.

The press release provided no details about the launch itself, though this report noted that the rocket failed to reach its goal of 100 kilometers, the altitude considered by most as the edge of space. The rocket, dubbed Barracuda, is solid-fueled and was apparently designed by T-Minus to demonstrate its capability for hypersonic testing.

This was the second suborbital launch from this spaceport. The first, in 2023, was a student test flight. In both cases, the launches were mostly a PR effort to sell the spaceport, which was first proposed in 2016 but has been unable so far to draw any launch customers. Maritime now also faces competition from the Atlantic Spaceport being proposed by a different company, Nordspace.

Proposed Canadian spaceports

The competition heats up: Maritime Launch Services, the startup that has been trying to establish Spaceport Nova Scotia since 2016, has now issued a “notice to airman” (NOTAM) outlining the range restrictions for a suborbital launch window from November 18 to November 24.

The launch is being conducted by the Netherlands rocket startup T-Minus, which signed a deal with Maritime in June 2025 to do two such launches of its Barracuda rocket before the end of this year.

The T-Minus Engineering Barracuda hypersonic test platform “is a single-stage, solid-fuel suborbital vehicle that stands approximately 4 metres tall. It features a booster with a diameter of 200 millimetres and a payload compartment measuring 1000 millimetres. Barracuda can carry payloads of up to 40 kilograms to altitudes reaching 120 kilometres.”

The only launch that has previously taken place at this spaceport was in 2023, when students from York University did a short 8-mile-high suborbital launch of a student-built rocket.

Maritime is now in a tight competition with another spaceport startup, Nordspace, which is pushing hard to initiate launches from its Newfoundland spaceport to the north. It remains unknown whether either can be made profitable.