Skyrora

Welcome to our in-depth analysis of Skyrora, originally published January 13th, 2023 and most recently updated October 7th, 2026 Updated content. Make sure to check out our mission statement and why we do what we do. Look at our New Space guide if you want explanations of terms and concepts used in our research. And follow us on X for updates.

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October 2026 update: What happened at Skyrora since 2023

• No flight since 2022: Skyrora has not launched a rocket since its Skylark L failed shortly after lift-off in Iceland on October 8th, 2022. In October 2026 its COO said the company is “tentatively aiming for 2030” for its first orbital launch, one day after a company press release still named 2027.
• Tests and licence: The UK Civil Aviation Authority licensed Skylark L launches from SaxaVord in July 2025, but Skyrora found no free pad there that year. In September 2026 Skyrora fired a scaled-down Skyrora XL for 45 seconds at Machrihanish, and a full first stage with nine engines has not been fired.
• Money in: The parent company paid GBP 41.6 million into Skyrora Ltd by the end of 2024, against GBP 28.0 million of losses carried forward, according to Skyrora’s accounts.
• Where the money comes from: The group booked GBP 36.1 million of revenue in 2024. GBP 24.4 million of it came from reselling online marketing traffic, and the rest from manufactured products under a GBP 35.5 million aerospace manufacturing contract with a customer the accounts do not name.
• Public money: ESA’s Boost! programme has put about EUR 4.4 million into Skyrora since 2021, and the first EUR 3 million award promised a test launch of the XL in 2022.
• Valuation: We estimate Skyrora’s value at GBP 15 to 40 million, down from our January 2023 estimate of GBP 40 to 75 million.
• Owners and board: Investor Maxym Polyakov has controlled the parent company, Skyrora Ventures, since December 2024 and holds about 90% of its shares. Founder Volodymyr Levykin and director Laura Edison left all group boards in May 2026, and Euan Clark is now the sole director, with no new CEO named.
• Sites: Skyrora works from its headquarters and factory in Cumbernauld, an engine test site in Midlothian and Machrihanish. The accounts say the Ukrainian unit’s role has been “materially reduced” since 2022 and its staff relocated.

What you should know about Skyrora

Skyrora: A closer look at Scotland’s rocket company

Skyrora is a Scottish new space company based in Cumbernauld near Glasgow that develops, builds and tests its own rockets under the Skyrora brand. Its main launch vehicle, the Skyrora XL, is a three-stage liquid rocket that burns hydrogen peroxide and kerosene and is designed to carry up to 315 kg into orbit.

Skyrora was founded in June 2017 and followed an iterative path, from weather balloons in 2019 to the Skylark Nano (6 km altitude) and the Skylark Micro (26.6 km altitude). The suborbital Skylark L failed shortly after lift-off in Iceland in October 2022, and the orbital XL has not flown.

Skyrora runs its operations from the headquarters and factory in Cumbernauld, an engine test site in Midlothian and the former airbase at Machrihanish. Until 2022 a large part of the engineering work took place in Dnipro, Ukraine, and in Bratislava, Slovakia. Skyrora holds a UK licence to launch Skylark L from SaxaVord Spaceport and has looked at sites abroad because no SaxaVord pad was free.

Who is behind Skyrora? Company history and founders

Skyrora was founded as “Space Alba Ltd.” in June 2017 by Laura Edison, who served as its general counsel and as a director until May 2026. The company was renamed Skyrora Limited in August 2017, and in January 2018 Daniel Hendry Smith, a British consultant, set up the holding company Skyrora Ventures Limited. The man behind both companies was Volodymyr Levykin, a British-Ukrainian businessman with a long record in online businesses, who led Skyrora as CEO and left its board in May 2026.

Skyrora: R&D in Ukraine’s “Rocket City”, production, assembly and launch in the UK (2018 – 2022)

Through his network, Levykin set up several research and development offices for Skyrora, with the main R&D facility in the city of Dnipro in Ukraine. Pavlo Botsula, who spent 20 years at the Ukrainian state aerospace company Yuzhmash, ran the Ukrainian office. A second office in Bratislava, Slovakia, handled propellant and structure testing, and a small German unit, Skyrora GmbH, worked on 3D printing. In Scotland, Skyrora built its main production site, the Skyrora Vehicle Assembly Building in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, with 55,000 square feet of factory and office space and a 67,000 square foot yard for launch rehearsals.

After Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the group moved work out of Dnipro. Its 2024 accounts say the Ukrainian unit’s role in core R&D and production was “materially reduced”, staff were relocated, and the unit carries a “material uncertainty” about its future. Skyrora’s February 2026 Modern Slavery Statement lists only the Cumbernauld headquarters and the Midlothian test site.

Geography: Facilities in Scotland, launch sites at home and abroad

Skyrora Ltd employed 48 people on average in 2024, up from 26 in 2020, according to its accounts. The whole group averaged 143 employees in 2024 against 50 in 2023, and most of the increase came from 56 production staff working on an aerospace manufacturing contract. The group also reports 272 “technical staff and subcontractors” across the UK and Ukraine, a figure that counts employees and outside contractors together.

For tests and launches, Skyrora has used several sites. Machrihanish on the Kintyre peninsula hosted the second-stage static fire in August 2022 and the scaled-down XL hot fire in September 2026, and Skyrora tests its engines at a site in Midlothian. The Skylark Micro and Skylark L launches took place on the Langanes peninsula in Iceland with Space Iceland. SaxaVord Spaceport on Unst, Shetland, is the site named in Skyrora’s UK launch licence.

Skyrora’s Rockets: Skylark Nano, Micro, L, SkyHy and Skyrora XL

Skyrora has been using a very iterative approach in its rocket development process. In 2018 and 2019, the company started developing its smaller sounding rockets such as the Skylark Nano and Skylark Micro. It launched several weather balloons in the early days for research purposes.

The first launches of the developmental rockets were carried out in 2019 and 2020 with successful launches of the Skylark Nano, reaching an altitude of 6 km, including a launch from Scottish soil. In 2021, they successfully launched the Skylark Micro rocket on their mobile launch base. The launch took place in Space Iceland and reached an altitude of over 26 km, the highest the company has come so far.

The company’s biggest rocket launch to date was the Skylark L, the suborbital rocket with a payload of 60 kg. The rocket took off from Langanes in Iceland on October 8th, 2022, but failed shortly after lift-off at about 300 m altitude and came down about half a kilometre from the launch site in the sea.

Skyrora’s main rocket is the Skyrora XL. According to the company’s current spec sheet, the XL is 22.7 metres tall and 2.2 metres wide, weighs 55.8 tonnes at lift-off and is designed to carry up to 315 kg into a sun-synchronous orbit of 500 to 1,000 km. It is a three-stage hydrogen peroxide (“HTP”) and kerosene rocket. The first stage uses 9 engines with 70 kN of thrust each at sea level (79.7 kN in vacuum). The second stage uses one engine with 85 kN in vacuum, and the third “orbital stage” (similar to the concept of RFA) provides 3.5 kN.

Tests, licence and launch sites (2023 – 2026)

In 2023 and 2024 Skyrora tested its 70 kN engines, many of them 3D printed on its own Skyprint 2 machine, at the Midlothian site. The group’s 2024 accounts report more than 50 qualification tests across 10 engines and say a subcontractor built and tested the XL first-stage tanks. In April 2025 the company reported a burst test of a first-stage propellant tank.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority issued Skyrora a launch operator licence on July 24th, 2025 and announced it on August 5th, 2025. It covers the suborbital Skylark L from SaxaVord, up to 16 launches a year, once Skyrora meets conditions on insurance, data sharing with the government, arrangements with the spaceport and airspace agreements. In August 2025 Levykin said SaxaVord was “not available any more for us to launch, this year at least”, because other companies held the pads.

Skyrora then named Etlaq in Oman, Australia, Andøya, Iceland and the Azores as other options, and its 2024 accounts list missing launch site access as a risk. In February 2026 it said it would explore buying assets of Orbex, which had entered administration, including Space Hub Sutherland, for up to GBP 10 million. Highlands and Islands Enterprise bought the Sutherland assets in August 2026. Omnidea bought the Orbex brand and its Forres assets on 30 September 2026.

In September 2026 Skyrora fired a scaled-down XL test vehicle for 45 seconds at Machrihanish and said the first data showed the subsystems worked. A full first stage with nine engines has not been fired, and Skyrora has announced no new Skylark L launch date or site. On October 2nd, 2026 COO Jack Marlow told Payload that the company is “tentatively aiming for 2030 for orbital launch”, with the next Skylark L planned for 2027.

Skyrora’s Mobile Launch Site for on-the-go launches worldwide

What’s interesting is that Skyrora is also developing a “Mobile Launch Complex” which can be quickly set up to launch vehicles. The mobile launch site includes all equipment needed for an on-site launch, such as assembly facilities for integration (1) testing, rocket propellant infrastructure (2) including storage (3), filling systems (8, 9), a mission control centre (5), power supplies (6) and launch pad (11) and emergency infrastructure (13, 14):

Skyrora’s launches took place in Scotland and Iceland. Apart from SaxaVord, Skyrora signed MoUs (“Memorandum of Understanding”) with Maritime Launch Services in Nova Scotia, Canada, and with the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance (GOSA) for a mobile launch platform in the North Sea. We found no public follow-up to either agreement after 2023. In 2025 Skyrora described its mobile setup as a “spaceport in a box” of about seven shipping containers.

Skyrora funding, valuation and financials

Skyrora Ltd is fully owned by Skyrora Ventures Limited. Maxym Polyakov has controlled Skyrora Ventures since December 2024 and, after a share transfer from Levykin shown in a confirmation statement of March 2025, holds about 90% of its shares, with Levykin holding about 10%. The 2024 group accounts name Polyakov as the ultimate controlling party. Polyakov was the main investor behind Firefly Aerospace in the US until selling the stake in 2022 after US national security concerns, and Firefly also had an R&D office in Dnipro.

The funding structure of Skyrora is comparable to RFA or HyImpulse, where a small group of shareholders funds the operations. No outside funding round has been filed. Skyrora Ventures paid GBP 41.6 million into Skyrora Ltd by the end of 2024 through shares and capital contributions, and Skyrora Ltd had GBP 28.0 million of losses carried forward at that date.

At the end of 2023 Skyrora Ltd had GBP 0.14 million in cash after a loss of about GBP 11.5 million that year, and its accounts flagged a material uncertainty about the group’s ability to continue as a going concern, linked to the war in Ukraine. The manufacturing contract signed in 2024 lifted cash to GBP 5.2 million by the end of that year.

Skyrora Ventures Ltd. and Skyrora Ltd.’s funding and share capital

Skyrora Ventures issued 35,000 preference shares of GBP 1,000 each (GBP 35 million), of which GBP 4.9 million was still unpaid at the end of 2023. In December 2024 it cancelled 6,936 of those shares, which wrote off the GBP 4.9 million that had never been paid and moved GBP 2.1 million into reserves. The remaining 28,064 shares became 28,064,000 ordinary shares of GBP 1, and the company also holds a capital contribution reserve of GBP 9.1 million from its shareholders.

The Ukrainian entity Skyrora UA LLC (СКАЙРОРА ЮА) had a share capital of roughly USD 1,400,000, paid in two rounds in 2021.

Skyrora’s funding depends on the parent group’s other businesses. Several subsidiaries of Skyrora Ventures, such as Saltire Connect Ltd, run affiliate and lead businesses in online advertising, including for online dating services. In 2024 the group booked GBP 36.1 million in revenue, of which GBP 24.4 million came from the “resale of marketing traffic” and GBP 11.6 million from manufactured products. The group made a profit after tax of GBP 7.3 million in 2024, after a loss of GBP 3.4 million in 2023, and held GBP 11.3 million in cash at the end of the year.

The products revenue comes from an aerospace manufacturing contract worth GBP 35.5 million that Skyrora signed in 2024 with a customer the accounts do not name. The group set up an Aerostructures Assembly Factory with more than 30 skilled roles for it, and Skyrora Ltd’s accounts say the contract was extended to 2026. In its report the auditor, MHA, drew attention to the value of the investment in Skyrora Ltd, which rests partly on launch revenue that management estimated from letters of intent.

Ownership and board changes (2024 – 2026)

In December 2024 Skyrora Ventures restructured its share capital, and on December 24th, 2024 Maxym Polyakov became its controlling shareholder while Levykin ceased to be a person with significant control. A confirmation statement dated March 4th, 2025 shows that Levykin transferred 25,257,609 shares to Polyakov, leaving Polyakov with about 90% and Levykin with about 10%.

In May 2026 the boards of both companies changed within one week. Laura Edison, a director since 2017, left on May 8th, and Levykin left the Skyrora Ventures board on May 8th and the Skyrora Ltd board on May 15th, together with the boards of all other group companies. Jack Marlow, Skyrora’s COO, joined the board on May 8th and left it on May 15th. Euan Clark, appointed on May 8th, 2026, has been the sole director of both companies since then. Skyrora has not explained the change or named a new CEO, and Marlow spoke for the company as COO in October 2026.

Public money: what ESA and the UK paid for (2021 – 2026)

In March 2021 ESA awarded Skyrora EUR 3 million from the UK’s share of ESA’s Boost! programme (the UK government gave the figure as GBP 2.5 million), alongside EUR 7.5 million for Orbex. The award was meant to qualify the XL’s main engine and complete a static fire of the integrated first and second stages. The UK government said the XL would be “test-launched in 2022 from a UK spaceport” and create 170 jobs, and the UK Space Agency’s corporate plan listed the stage tests as a 2023/24 milestone.

By our count the XL test launch is at least four and a half years late, and the integrated stage test is more than two years past the UK Space Agency’s milestone. The group booked GBP 634,487 of government grants from Innovate UK and ESA as income in 2024.

Business plan, strategy and cost of a launch: Pricing at GBP 30,000 per kg payload

Skyrora’s business plan centres on the Skyrora XL. In its 2021 accounts the group said the XL could deliver 4,082 kg a year at 16 launches with an 81% fill rate. It added that 23 letters of intent with satellite operators could bring more than GBP 500 million in revenue at GBP 30,000 per kilogram. Those accounts expected launch revenue from 2023 to 2025. The 2024 accounts expect no cash from orbital launches until late 2026 and still base that estimate on letters of intent, with no signed launch contract disclosed.

Each XL needs 11 engines, so 16 launches a year would need 176 engines a year. By the end of 2024 Skyrora had built 10 first-stage engines for qualification tests, according to the group accounts, which leaves a large gap between today’s output and the cadence in the plan.

The GBP 30,000 per kg sits at the upper end of the market, with companies like Isar Aerospace or RFA quoting EUR 10,000 – EUR 15,000 (GBP 8,800 – GBP 13,500) at the time of our first review in 2023.

The target date for the first XL launch moved from 2022 (stated in March 2021) to the end of 2024 (December 2023), 2026 (February 2025), 2027 (August 2025) and “tentatively” 2030 (October 2026).

Skyrora Valuation: Estimated between GBP 15 – 40 million

Skyrora has never raised money in a priced round, so no market valuation exists, and we estimate its value from the accounts. The lower end is Skyrora Ltd’s net assets of GBP 17.0 million at the end of 2024, which include GBP 15.1 million owed to the company, much of it by other group companies by our estimate. The upper end is the GBP 41.6 million that the shareholder paid into Skyrora Ltd.

We do not go above the money paid in, because Skyrora has not flown since 2022, was not preselected for ESA’s European Launcher Challenge and discloses no signed launch contract in its accounts. The manufacturing contract earns money now, but it is build-to-print work for another company and adds little to the value of a launch business. In January 2023 we estimated GBP 40 to 75 million, assuming an XL launch in 2023 or 2024. Much will depend on whether Skylark L flies again and whether the full XL first stage fires.

Working at Skyrora: Salary, benefits and opportunities

With its headquarters in Cumbernauld, most jobs at Skyrora are in the Glasgow area, plus the engine test site in Midlothian. Skyrora Ltd employed 48 people on average in 2024 and the wider group 143, with most new staff working in production on the manufacturing contract. In October 2026 Skyrora’s careers page said all positions were filled. Overtime or “sprints” can be expected, as at most launch start-ups.

In 2022 Skyrora’s job ads paid average amounts or a bit below. Technicians (Mechanical Technicians, Test Site Technician) earned between GBP 29,000 and GBP 32,000, team leaders between GBP 45,000 and GBP 50,000, and engineers, robot operators, programmers and project managers in between with GBP 35,000 – GBP 40,000. We found no newer job ads with salaries.

In terms of other benefits, not much is public, though learning curves should generally be pretty steep and the company is at the forefront of some of the most exciting infrastructure projects in the UK. We do not know whether Skyrora has a stock options program or any sort of company participation through shares.

My opinion on Skyrora and why you should keep an eye on them

What I like about Skyrora

• Iterative approach: Going from weather balloons to the Skylark Nano, Micro and L gave the team achievable milestones, actual vehicles to build and launch experience in Iceland and Scotland between 2019 and 2022. That kind of hardware record is still rare among European launch start-ups.
• Own licence and test sites: Skyrora was the first UK-based rocket company to receive a CAA launch licence (2025), and it has its own factory in Cumbernauld and its own engine test site in Midlothian.
• Content game: Yea, small thing, but if you want to get your kids interested in rockets, you should check out the Skyrora Coloring Book or the Skyrora Rocket Origami. They also have dozens of articles explaining the basics of rocketry in layman’s terms.

What I don’t like about Skyrora

• Lost pace after 2022: Until 2022 Skyrora built and flew rockets at a steady pace. After the group moved its R&D out of Dnipro, the launch dates slipped every year, and the company now earns its money from aerostructures and ad traffic.
• Launch dates: The first XL launch moved from 2022 to the end of 2024, then to 2026, 2027 and now “tentatively” 2030. A second Skylark L was ready about six to eight months after the October 2022 failure, according to the company, and has not flown.
• Where the money comes from: Two thirds of the group’s 2024 revenue came from reselling online marketing traffic, and most of the rest from building aerostructures for another company. Both keep Skyrora running, and neither brings the XL closer to a launch pad.
• Who runs the company: In May 2026 the founder and the long-time general counsel left all boards in one week, the COO sat on the board for seven days, and a new sole director took over. Skyrora has not explained any of it in public.
• Public money results: ESA paid for an integrated stage test and a 2022 test launch, and by October 2026 neither had happened.
• Doing a lot at the same time: 3+ countries with operations until 2022, a mobile launch site, a new fuel called Ecosene, a third stage for orbital services such as space debris removal (“SpaaS – Space as a Service”) and, since 2024, aerostructures for another company. Skyrora has a lot on its plate and only so many resources.

Things to watch out for

• Skylark L2: Where and when it flies, and whether Skyrora gets a slot at SaxaVord or goes abroad.
• Full first-stage fire: Nine engines firing together is the test ESA paid for in 2021 and the step before any XL launch.
• Accounts for 2025: Due by December 31st, 2026. They will show headcount, cash, the manufacturing contract and who signs as director.
• Ukrainian approach: The R&D base in Dnipro brought engineering talent until 2022. The 2024 accounts still list Skyrora UA LLC with a material uncertainty about its future.

Update from October 2026 on Skyrora

• Added the CAA launch licence (July 2025), the missing SaxaVord pad, the interest in Orbex’s Sutherland assets and the scaled-down XL hot fire (September 2026)
• Added the ownership change to Maxym Polyakov (December 2024 – March 2025) and the board change of May 2026
• Added Skyrora Ltd accounts 2022 – 2024 and the 2024 group accounts: headcount, money paid in, losses, revenue sources and the GBP 35.5 million manufacturing contract
• Added public money from ESA and the UK, promised vs delivered
• New valuation estimate, three new charts and a new header image

Structured company information on Skyrora Limited

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