Canada’s Nova Scotia spaceport schedules a suborbital launch for November
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.
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.