The municipality located in northern Sweden aims to become the world’s leading space tourism center in the future.
10:59•Updated 11:07
In Kiruna, Sweden, Europe’s first space center will be inaugurated today, Friday, which is to launch satellites and, in the future, perhaps tourists into space.
The king of Sweden acts as the master of ceremonies for the opening Kaarle Kustaa. The Prime Minister will also be heard at the event by Ulf Kristersson and President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen speaking engagements.
The space center is located approximately 140 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. Its development began in 2005 with the goal of building a world-class center for future space tourism.
In 2007, the company Virgin Galactic, which develops space tourism, and the parent company of the Kiiruna center, Spaceport Sweden, entered into an agreement on cooperation to build a new launch center.
Large-scale space tourism is just beginning
In addition to tourism, the now inaugurated space center is to serve as a launching and operating point for many space-related services, Spaceport Sweden informs on its website.
It is not known when the first spaceship or satellite is going to be launched from Kiruna.
Space tourism itself is an industry that is more than 20 years old. About an American millionaire About Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist in April 2001.
The development of space tourism has been slow. Despite the advances in technology, flying anything into space is still relatively expensive.
Currently, trips outside the atmosphere are being developed by companies such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX, but ticket prices are calculated in hundreds of thousands or millions of euros, depending on the flight.