“Bavaria One is flying,” says Söder happily, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Sweden. Talking about it, he left the words “Bavaria 1” on a real rocket component. But first things first: On Friday, the Bavarian Prime Minister will visit the “Esrange” space center east of Kiruna, in the far north of Sweden, at the end of his trip to Sweden. An appointment that was tailor-made for the space fan, who had registered Bavarian space ambitions a few years ago with the keyword “Bavaria One” and was initially ridiculed for it. Now he is standing here and is being shown the space travel site in the middle of the northern Swedish forests. Reindeer and moose could be seen between the trees in the snow on the journey there.
Kiruna is around 950 kilometers north of Stockholm as the crow flies. This means that Sweden’s northernmost city is almost twice as far from the country’s capital as Munich is from Berlin. Two companies from Bavaria are prominently represented in this seclusion. The site is central to future European space activities. From here, the European Union wants to send satellites into space in the future from its own European territory. “Esrange” is intended to complement the large EU spaceport in French Guiana on the other side of the Atlantic.
To date, the space center, which went into operation in 1966, has been used primarily for the launch of sounding rockets and high-altitude balloons. We are now continuing to work on the future. The race is on, the competitive pressure in the space business is great. The two companies from Bavaria that test their rocket engines here in northern Sweden are Isar Aerospace and the Rocket Factory Augsburg. Dozens of employees from Bavaria work here on the site. “Rockets are launched here, research is done here,” says Söder, and is confident about the increasing commercialization of space travel: “We will earn a share of the big cake. That makes me proud.”
The location in Sweden offers excellent conditions for testing your own rocket engines, says Josef Fleischmann, co-founder of Isar Aerospace. “Here we can test our rocket engines according to our individual specifications and according to our schedule.” He emphasizes: “Europe must be able to transport satellites into space cost-effectively, flexibly and autonomously, and we are laying the foundation for this here.” Jörn Spurmann, co-founder of Rocket Factory Augsburg, calls the location in Sweden “crucial for our recent successes”. A state-of-the-art engine test stand has been put into operation here, something that would not have been possible at any location in Germany.
The visit to Queen Silvia of Sweden in Stockholm Palace was the royal highlight of the trip.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) visits the Esrange Space Center.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
Dog fan Markus Söder will also have had a lot of fun on the dog sled ride. Also in the sleigh are Florian Herrmann, the head of the State Chancellery (front) and Karolina Gernbauer, the head of the State Chancellery.
(Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa)
Söder sees Bavarian companies at the forefront of their further journey into space. “We are the Space Valley in Germany,” he says. He also mentions the largest aerospace faculty currently being set up in Europe as a further component of the Bavarian space strategy. Bavaria also works closely with the German Aerospace Center and the European Space Agency Esa, both of which are also represented in Kiruna. One of the control centers of the International Space Station (ISS) is located in Oberpfaffenhofen, west of Munich. And Söder envisions a planned lunar control center being located there for European missions to the moon. “It looks pretty good,” says Söder in Kiruna.
At the end of his trip to Sweden, which took him to the ABBA Museum and to Queen Silvia on Thursday, there is once again a contrast to diplomacy and space travel: Söder and his delegation are pulled through the Swedish forests on dog sleds. And for a moment, it seems, Söder has forgotten the “Bavaria One”.