European Spaceflight
Places · Spaceport
Esrange Space Center
A rocket range and balloon base with 5,200 km² of empty tundra to fall back into, which is why it recovers almost everything it launches.
- Where
- Kiruna, Sweden
- Coordinates
- 67.89°N 21.10°E
- Since
- 1966
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- sscspace.com
The sky from here
The sky over this spot is zone 3 — rural transition, Bortle 3–4, with a naked-eye limit around magnitude 6.2–7.0. The Milky Way is clearly there but loses its detail near the horizon. Light domes are obvious in several directions.
Against that sky 106 of the 110 Messier objects are straightforward in 10×50 binoculars and 106 in a 130mm, with 38 reachable by eye alone. The nearest sky of Bortle 2 or better lies about 7 km north-east of here.
Between 2 April and 10 September the Sun never gets eighteen degrees below the horizon from this latitude, so there is no astronomical darkness at all for those 162 nights. Nothing faint is observable in that window, however far you drive from the nearest town.
The centre of the galaxy never rises here at all, which removes the brightest part of the Milky Way from the sky permanently. Of the 110 Messier objects, 33 never set from here and 20 never rise.
The sky here is kindest to Owl Nebula, Pinwheel Galaxy and Little Dumbbell, each of which passes within a few degrees of overhead — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Bode's Galaxy, Cigar Galaxy and Spindle Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Against that, Trifid Nebula, Lagoon Nebula and Southern Pinwheel never clear the horizon here at all. No amount of aperture or patience changes that; the only remedy is to travel.
Read at 67.89°N 21.10°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
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Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Esrange Space Center?
Everything south of declination −22°. From 67.9°N that is a cap 68° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 31% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 31% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Esrange Space Center get?
Anything from 13 hours 19 minutes down to none whatsoever. Around 21 December the night is as long as it gets here, and around 2 April the sky simply never finishes darkening — a problem no amount of driving solves, because it is the Sun's depression angle and not the streetlights. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer.
What orbits can be reached from Esrange Space Center?
Anything inclined at 67.9° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 67.9°N arrives in an orbit inclined at 67.9° — the shallowest the site can reach without spending propellant to turn the plane — and steeper orbits are simply a matter of launching on a different heading. That is already steeper than the Space Station's own 51.6°, so even reaching the Station from here means a dogleg rather than the straightforward case it is closer to the equator. The bill arrives on the way down to the equator. Geostationary orbit is at 0°, so a satellite launched from here carries 67.9° of unwanted inclination that has to be removed in orbit, and the fuel to remove it is mass that is not the spacecraft.
How far is Esrange Space Center from the other sites on this map?
Andøya Spaceport is the nearest thing to it here — 258 km to the north-west. That is also the nearest other spaceport, with the next one 1,050 km beyond it. Distances are great-circle, so they are what a signal covers rather than what a road does.