New Space: How does it all work? Simple explanations of complex things
When we write about new space companies and all the people and technologies involved, it can get a bit confusing – trust us, because we get confused frequently when we research and write… There are so many different abbreviations and concepts that are part of each and every article, that we thought it makes sense to write them down and explain them in simple terms. So without further ado, here are some abbreviations, concepts and things that are helpful to understand “new space”:
Updated October 2026: a new section on spaceports, launch pads and orbits, and examples from the European launch companies we cover.
Actually sending stuff up to space: Rockets, payloads, propellants etc.
Rockets and stages:
- Most rockets have “stages”, meaning first stage, second stage or even third stage. Those are basically individual rockets that are put together to launch the rocket. Once a rocket ascends and has reached a certain height, the stages are dropped one-by-one to make the rocket lighter. A lighter rocket makes it easier to continue, cause you need to fight gravity a little less (just like a 50 kilo deadlift is easier than a 100 kilo deadlift). These “stages” are kind of required for overall better performance of rockets. Single-stage-to-orbit designs (abbreviated “SSTO”) have been studied for decades, but no rocket launched from Earth has reached orbit on a single stage.
- The European small rockets we cover use two or three stages. Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum, PLD Space’s MIURA 5, Latitude’s launcher and MaiaSpace’s Maia have two. Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA ONE, HyImpulse’s SL1 and Skyrora’s Skyrora XL have three.
- Reusable stages land after launch and fly again. SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 first stage on 21 December 2015 and now does it as routine. No European orbital rocket has landed a stage as of October 2026. MaiaSpace, owned by ArianeGroup, plans a first stage that lands on a barge at sea.
Rockets and propellant: Chemical rockets or nuclear rockets?
- First of all, all rockets we use to get to space from Earth are chemical rockets, meaning they use chemical reactions to produce thrust, the force that makes things move (thanks for pointing that out, Newton!). There are also nuclear rockets and ion engines, but neither can lift a rocket off the ground: ion engines push far too weakly and only work in space, and nuclear rocket engines have been tested on the ground but have never flown. So, chemical rockets need a propellant (things that can react to produce force), and the propellant is generally always a fuel and an oxidizer. You might ask: why two? After all, cars only have gas, airplanes only use kerosene. Well, that’s correct, but they technically also use two, but the oxidizer (like oxygen) is already in the air. Remember, rockets go very high, and the higher you go, the less O2 (an oxidizer) is there (at some point: 0%), so rockets have to bring their own! That’s why there are all these different combinations of propellant, which of course are always abbreviated and sound confusing, like “LOX” and “RP1” or “LOX” and liquid methane, or N2O4 and Hydrazine.
- LOX = Liquid Oxygen, generally supercooled and at very low temperature because oxygen becomes liquid only at cryogenic temperatures of about -183° C
- RP1 = Rocket Propellant 1 (I mean, that’s not that difficult right?) which is a refined kerosene. RFA ONE, MIURA 5 and Latitude’s launcher burn kerosene with LOX.
- Liquid methane = Methane (CH4) is a main component of natural gas, and refined liquid methane has good properties as a rocket fuel. It can also be produced in places like Mars through ISRU (”In-Situ-Resource-Utilization”), which is why SpaceX’s Starship engines (”Raptor”) use methane. They have flown since April 2023. In Europe, Maia is built around Prometheus, a methane engine.
- Liquid hydrogen = The lightest fuel and the most efficient one in use, but it only turns liquid at about -253° C and needs large, insulated tanks. Ariane 6 burns liquid hydrogen with LOX in its core stage and its upper stage.
- Liquid propane = The gas from barbecue bottles, cooled until it is liquid. Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum burns propane with LOX, and Orbex designed its Prime rocket around bio-propane.
- HTP = High-Test Peroxide, hydrogen peroxide at very high strength, used as the oxidizer in place of LOX. It can be stored at room temperature. The Skyrora XL burns HTP with kerosene.
- Hydrazine = Nasty stuff, chemically N2H4, and also a “hypergolic” propellant, which means it “spontaneously ignites” when it comes in contact with certain other components, such as N2O4 (dinitrogen tetroxide). That’s nice cause you don’t need a complex mechanism to ignite it, but it’s pretty bad when it happens, well, “spontaneously”… Today it is mostly used in the small thrusters that steer satellites.
Rockets and propellant: Solid, liquid or hybrid
- There are basically three types of states of the propellant that you can use:
- Liquid fuel rockets (we call them “engines“) are the main choice for space-bound rockets and almost everyone uses it (SpaceX for Falcon and Starship, Europe for the Ariane, Russia for the Soyuz, China for the Long March). This is because liquid fuel rockets have properties you want for launch rockets, such as high “specific impulse” (how efficient is the engine with its propellants, because you need to measure “thrust” in relation to the weight of the propellants themselves – a higher Isp is always better), the ability to turn them off and on again (for aerodynamical pressure, for dropping the different stages, correcting trajectories) and the option to reuse them (SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 first stages and flies them again). The downside of liquid fuel rockets is that they’re quite dangerous and they like to spontaneously combust (think huge explosions) and engines tend to be rather complex and fickle – though once they work, they work (hello, SpaceX). In Europe’s small-launcher field, Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, Latitude, Skyrora and MaiaSpace all build liquid rockets. That makes liquid fuel rockets the “star of the rocket family”: Good fundamentals, high potential, but needs constant training and always has to be treated exactly how they want to be treated – or they’ll explode and take you down with them.
- Solid fuel rockets (they have “motors“ instead of engines) are mostly used for missiles used by the military, such as air-to-air missiles, short-to-mid range missiles and even ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, the ones that carry nuclear warheads), though a few use liquid fuels. Solids also help lift space rockets: Europe’s Vega C flies on three solid stages with a small liquid upper stage, and Ariane 6 straps two or four solid P120C boosters to its liquid core. Solid fuel has low efficiency and lower specific impulse, but they still give good thrust and they’re pretty safe to handle. However, once you light a solid fuel rocket, it’s hard to turn them off. And also forget about full reusability, because they cannot land themselves once they’re spent, so you’d need parachutes or something, which is not that efficient (and things break), and the combustion chambers are usually spent and pretty dirty or almost impossible to clean up and reuse. NASA did go the parachute route with the Space Shuttle’s two solid boosters, which were fished out of the Atlantic and refurbished for later flights. That makes solid fuel rockets sort of the “reliable and likeable but also kind of a simpleton” of the rocket family.
- Hybrid fuel rockets (they also have “motors“) have so far been used mostly for research, teaching and experimenting. Germany’s HyImpulse flew its first SR75 hybrid sounding rocket from South Australia on 3 May 2024 and is building SL1, a three-stage hybrid rocket meant for orbit. They combine some of the advantages from solid and liquid rockets by using solid fuel (HyImpulse uses paraffin, basically candle wax) and liquid oxidizers. You can therefore turn them off (and on) again with the right equipment, you can still get a pretty good specific impulse and they’re much safer to handle than liquid rockets. Unfortunately, hybrids still have several disadvantages: they require a fairly complex motor, expensive structures to handle temperatures (such as carbon composites which are very expensive), your Isp is never going to be as good as that of a liquid fuel rocket – forget sending heavy stuff up to space – and full reusability is considered to be pretty difficult (see solid fuel rockets). Basically, a hybrid fuel rocket is the “nerd of the family” who equates “scientifically complex” with “good”, who has worked very hard all their life, but who just doesn’t have that natural genius that his sibling liquid-fuel-rocket was born with, and who isn’t as likeable and understandable as his other sibling solid-fuel-rocket.
Getting off the ground: spaceports, launch sites and pads
A spaceport is like an airport for rockets. It holds everything a launch needs on the ground: halls to put the rocket together, tanks for the propellants, a control centre, tracking antennas and one or more launch pads. Several of the European sites we cover started out decades ago with small research rockets, and others are still being built, so the first thing we check on any spaceport is whether a rocket has reached orbit from it. Our European Space Map shows where they all are.
Spaceport, launch complex, launch pad
- Spaceport (or launch site) = the airport. The whole site, plus the strip of land, sea and air the rockets fly over. Examples: Andøya Space Center in Norway, SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, Esrange Space Center in Sweden and the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
- Launch complex = the terminal. One pad plus the buildings that serve it, such as the hall where the rocket is assembled and the propellant storage. A complex is usually built for one rocket type. At Kourou, Ariane 6 has its own complex, ELA-4.
- Launch pad = the runway. The concrete spot where the rocket stands, gets fuelled and lifts off. A spaceport can have several pads and lease each one to a different company. SaxaVord has approval for three pads, and one of them (“Fredo”, used by Rocket Factory Augsburg) is built. Andøya has one working orbital pad, reserved for Isar Aerospace.
- Range = the area the rocket flies over. During a launch it is closed to ships and planes. The range team tracks the rocket and can destroy it if it flies off course (this is called flight termination).
- Spaceport licence and launch licence: in the UK the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) licenses the site and the rocket company separately. SaxaVord got its spaceport licence in December 2023 and RFA got its launch licence for RFA ONE in January 2025. As of October 2026 no rocket has launched from SaxaVord. Sweden has no licence for an orbital launch yet and still works under its Space Activities Act of 1982, and Germany has no space law at all.
Suborbital or orbital
- Suborbital: the rocket goes up and comes back down. Sounding rockets fly up to a few hundred kilometres and give experiments a few minutes of weightlessness. Space is usually counted from 100 km up. Esrange has launched more than 600 sounding rockets since 1966.
- Orbital: to stay up, a satellite has to fly sideways fast enough to keep falling around the Earth, about 7.5 km per second at 800 km altitude according to ESA. That takes far more energy than a sounding rocket needs, which is why a site with hundreds of research launches behind it can have zero orbital ones. Apart from Kourou, the only European spaceport we have reviewed that has sent a rocket to orbit is Andøya: Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum got there on 5 September 2026.
Orbits, and why a spaceport’s location matters
- LEO = Low Earth Orbit, anything below about 2,000 km. This is where most things in space are, such as satellites or the ISS.
- SSO = Sun-Synchronous Orbit, a polar orbit (one that runs over the poles) where a satellite passes over each place at the same local time every day. Earth observation satellites like it, usually at 600 to 800 km. Rockets heading for SSO launch north or south, which is why far-northern sites like Andøya, SaxaVord and Esrange can serve these orbits.
- GEO = Geostationary Orbit, about 36,000 km up, where a satellite stays above one spot of the equator. Rockets drop satellites in a GTO (geostationary transfer orbit) first. Launch sites near the equator get a push from the Earth’s rotation for these orbits, which is why Europe flies Ariane 6 from Kourou, about 5° north of the equator.
- Where the stages fall: spent stages come down along the flight path, so spaceports sit next to open sea. Esrange is inland: its rockets heading north cross Norwegian territory at about 80 km altitude, and their first stages fall into the sea south-west of Svalbard.
- Sea launch: a rocket can also lift off from a ship. Germany’s German Offshore Spaceport Alliance (GOSA) planned exactly that in the North Sea. Its owners voted to dissolve it in January 2025, and no rocket ever launched from it.