German Offshore Spaceport Alliance

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Welcome to our in-depth analysis of the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance, originally published February 27th, 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: GOSA is being wound up, no rocket ever launched

• Status: The four owners of German Offshore Spaceport Alliance GmbH voted on January 21st, 2025 to dissolve the company. The Bremen court register entered the liquidation on December 3rd, 2025, and the three managing directors now act as liquidators.
• Launches: No rocket ever launched from a GOSA platform. The first demo, four small suborbital rockets planned for June 16th to 30th, 2024, stayed in port because a licence from the United Kingdom was missing.
• Money: GOSA GmbH had no employees in 2023 and 2024 and earned EUR 24,839 in 2024. On February 7th, 2025, 17 days after the owners voted to close GOSA, the transport ministry handed over grants of about EUR 870,000 for the OSLIOS design study. The money went to companies of OHB, Harren and MediaMobil and to the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
• Successor: In November 2025 OHB founded the European Spaceport Company, led by two former GOSA managing directors and Ulrich Scheib of MT Aerospace, to build an offshore launch platform and a launch complex in Kourou. It promised a first launch within 12 to 18 months and, as of October 7th, 2026, has named no date, site or licence.
• Politics: Germany still has no space law. The 2025 coalition agreement backs “a launch platform in the North Sea”, and in July 2026 the defence minister said a launch site run by the Bundeswehr is being considered.

What you should know about the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance (GOSA)

German Offshore Spaceport Alliance: Germany’s rocket launch site in the North Sea that never launched

Germany spends over one billion Euro every year on space and related industries. Quality engineering, a highly advanced economy and a well-educated workforce: those are qualities attributed to Germany. One would think that “space” is where the largest European economy excels. That is, unfortunately, not the case. One of the reasons for Germany’s secondary role in space: The lack of a dedicated launch site for its own rockets.

This is what the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance (“GOSA”) set out to change from 2020. With a mobile rocket launch site in the North Sea, Germany would have gained independence, advanced its national (new) space economy and offered a flexible launch site for European or international launchers.

There had been plenty of rumors over the years about a German rocket launch site, and Germany’s plans for a space law added fuel in 2022 and 2023. In 2023 we put the mobile spaceport into a framework that helped judge whether the North Sea platform could send rockets to orbit. That analysis stays on this page, followed by what became of the plan between 2023 and 2026.

This is the rocket launch platform the Germans planned

A historic look at Germany’s rocket launch sites

To understand the history of spaceports or rocket launch sites in Germany, it makes sense to add historical context to the country’s space industry. During the time of national socialism, Berlin and Peenemünde on the Baltic Sea were used as the primary testing sites for research and military rockets. Peenemünde was especially well known, as it was the training ground for legendary rocket engineers such as Wernher von Braun, father of the Saturn rockets. Cuxhaven on the North Sea was used in the 50s and 60s, and Zingst was used in East Germany during the 80s and 90s. None of those sites, however, were ever properly established for orbital launches.

The reasons are simple: Germany does not offer any non-inhabited sites with clear orbital paths, either for equatorial orbits or polar orbits. Neither does Germany have any former colonies with potential launch sites, like France with French Guiana. No commercial or scientific approaches to a spaceport have been made, such as Italy with the Luigi Broglio Space Center on the San Marco platform in Kenya, or Switzerland with their mobile launch site Sea Launch in the Pacific.

Germany’s aspirations for a national spaceport

The first real approach to a new spaceport and launch site came in 2018 on the back of the commercialization of space over the previous decade. With launch startups sprouting up throughout Europe and initiatives like “Boost!” from ESA, Germany was beginning to consider a dual and market-oriented approach to space.

In 2018, the Federation of German Industries (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, BDI) asked the federal government to check if and how a launch site could be realized. Out of this inquiry came a potential mobile vertical launch site solution in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the North Sea, operated by a private company.

Backed by BDI’s initial request and equipped with an in-depth strategy paper on the North Sea launch platform in August 2020, the project was formalized and put up for debate in the senate of the city state of Bremen, hometown of players such as OHB SE, but also one of the largest port and shipping cities in Germany. Armed with an in-depth concept and feasibility study that was to be the baseline of initial discussion with the government, the key message was: Realization of a private launch platform for Germany in the North Sea with financial backing by the government.

But who exactly was behind it, formally, and informally? Let us take a closer look at the history of GOSA, the consortium behind the initial proposal.

History of the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance GmbH (GOSA)

GOSA goes back to an initiative from OHB SE, one of Germany’s largest corporates in the space and satellite industry. Originally founded in June 2017 as “OHB Digital Maritime Services GmbH”, the company was renamed German Offshore Spaceport Alliance GmbH by a shareholder decision of December 9th, 2020. Initially, “OHB Digital Maritime Services” had the goal of realizing the “com4offshore” project, a working group of companies trying to establish what was then touted as “competent consortium to develop an integrated, multi-modal communications systems for interactive real-time applications for offshore wind energy”. The players involved:

• Deutsche Offshore Consult (DOC) GmbH, a consulting service for offshore projects in the North Sea, now bought out by Tractebel and called “Tractebel DOC GmbH”,
• megatel GmbH, which is now OHB Digital Services GmbH,
• MediaMobil Communications GmbH, a satellite communications provider focussing on maritime systems,
• OHB Teledata GmbH, another OHB venture and
• the European Space Agency (ESA), who was the primary research driver of the project.

We go into detail here because, while we’re unsure how far the com4offshore project went after it ended, the key players in the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance GmbH stayed the same.

Key players and people behind the North Sea launch platform

Behind GOSA were OHB, MediaMobil, and BEJU GmbH, a Bremen holding company run by Oliver Spalthoff, founder and (former) owner of Deutsche Offshore Consult (DOC), now part of Tractebel. The project was further supported by Harren & Partner, who were to provide the ship for the mobile launch platform, Lampe & Schwartze as insurance partner and BLG Logistics, providing port infrastructure in Bremen. Harren’s group became a shareholder itself in April 2024.

The key feasibility study was developed by Tractebel DOC, who, throughout 2020, developed the plans and interviewed German launch startups for feedback. The launch startups included HyImpulse Technologies, Isar Aerospace as well as Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA). RFA is also OHB’s rocket launch venture, almost exclusively funded by them, thus closing the loop on the reasons for the initial proposal of a mobile launch platform.

After officially founding GOSA in December 2020, the year 2021 was primarily used to push the project through political channels, resulting in a much publicized event with Germany’s then Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Peter Altmaier. At the event, GOSA, under the guidance of Altmaier, signed 4 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with launch partners that could use the mobile launch platform:

• HyImpulse Technologies GmbH,
• Rocket Factory Augsburg AG,
• Skyrora Ltd. from the UK and
• T-Minus from the Netherlands.

The timeline was ambitious, with the platform planned for 2022 and first launches in 2023. None of the four partners ever launched from a GOSA platform. The date of the event with minister Altmaier: September 6th, 2021, 2 weeks before federal elections resulted in social democrats taking charge and relieving Altmaier, a conservative, of his duties.

Back to square one? Adapting in 2022, new signs of life in early 2023

Having to deal with a new political framework and not the warmest welcome by the new red-green coalition, 2022 was used to adapt and refine the mobile spaceport’s approach to the new climate. In February 2022, the war in Ukraine broke out and Germany subsequently pledged an increase of €100 billion in defense budget – something that could certainly benefit the national space industry.

Noise around the launch platform started to increase in the second half of 2022 and in the beginning of 2023, with the consortium attending new space and satellite conferences, and formalizing the approach to the mobile launch site. Presentations from the Small Satellite Conference in August 2022 and a number of publicity events from local radio to the national press kept the spaceport in people’s minds. The main announcement in December 2022: “We’re still here, and we’re still targeting a launch in 2023.” Quite confident. So what exactly did the mobile launch site look like on paper?

Germany’s Spaceport in the North Sea: How it was meant to work

The feasibility study analyzed different types of ships to be used, coming to the conclusion that a “Combi Dock” vessel, a versatile dock vessel equipped with a stern ramp for rolling cargo on and off the vessel (RoRo – roll on roll of instead of LoLo – lift on lift off), would be the best solution. Harren & Partner, the shipping company supporting the project, would supply the “Combi Dock I” vessel for this purpose.

Info	Combi Dock I
Type	Roll-On-Roll-Off, open stern-ramp
Lift	3 heavy lift cranes for 700 tons lift capacity on the ship
Length	170 meters
Breadth	25 meters
Cargo width	18 meters
Velocity	16 knots

The rocket would then be loaded onto the ship horizontally and the vessel would set off towards the launch site in the North Sea. There, it would need to be stabilized through dynamic positioning systems (DP2) to minimize pitching and rolling movements of the ship (fixed jack-up variations have been examined by GOSA as well). The rocket could then be erected vertically on the ship, while the stern ramp would be left open to let the rocket exhaust exit the vehicle unhindered.

Before propellant tanking begins, the crew would be evacuated to a secondary support vessel. Further marine control vessels would likely be required for initial launches, as well as a recovery vessel downstream of the launch trajectory. Once crew evacuation and subsequent propellant tanking are completed, the vertical launch could take place with a polar or SSO orbit.

Estimated operational timeframe and launch capabilities for Germany

Since this is not a fixed launch platform, each launch would take between 10 and 15 days of preparation, transition, launch and return to base. The best case scenarios analyzed for a “Combi Lift” vessels are roughly 6 days net. Considering weather circumstances, a total of 250 potential days of operation are possible throughout the year, resulting in up to 25, maybe even 30 launches per year per vessel.

Operation	Best case estimates for “Combi Lift” vessel
Transit / transport to launch site	1 day
Positioning	0.25 days
Project operation / launch	3 days
Positioning	0.25 days
Transit / transport to base	1 day
Weather restrictions for transit/operation	Max 4m waves Hs, <25m/s winds
Weather restrictions for positioning / launch	Max 2.5m waves Hs, <18m/s winds

Business and financials: How much does a mobile launch platform cost?

Shareholders: Who was actually behind GOSA

The company started in 2017 with OHB holding half of the EUR 50,000 capital and MediaMobil and BEJU a quarter each. When it became GOSA in December 2020, OHB’s subsidiary sold a quarter of the shares to the company itself.

Own shares of a GmbH (“Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung”, limited liability company) carry no vote. GOSA’s articles required a two-thirds majority of the votes cast for decisions and all votes for any change to the articles. With 12,503 of the 37,501 voting shares, OHB held 33.3% of the votes from 2020 to 2024, just enough to block any decision and effectively in control of the project.

In April 2024 SAL Projects, part of the Harren group, bought GOSA’s own shares, and in May 2024 OHB moved its stake from OHB Digital Services to the parent OHB SE. From then on four owners held about 25% each, and no single owner could block a two-thirds vote.

Financing: Roughly €22 million to €30 million asked for to get to operations

Though the launch site was driven by a corporate, the stated goal was a private launch platform with financial backing from the government. Our calculations and estimates rest on the public feasibility study by DOC Offshore from August 2020.

This initial proposal’s estimated cost is roughly €30 to €35 million for the first seven years of the launch platform. All costs would be covered through public funds, which would bring the platform to an operational status after 4 years. The initially proposed investment overview as follows:

The initial proposal sought an investment of roughly €35 million over the first 7 years of operations, of which €2 million are required for permits and initial engineering, plus a total of €12 million for the cost of mobilization and demobilization of the launch platform. There is an estimated €7.5 million in guarantees for the shipowner, which will not be charged in case the launch plans go according to plans, thus explaining the difference between €22 or €30 million in funding requirements.

A further €3 million was planned for the start of operations in the third year, which we estimated in 2023 at around 2025, and another €3.8 million in subsidies for new space startups launching from the platform.

Had the plans gone through, the federal government would have been under budget by roughly €2.6 million per year after year 5, which could have paid for up to 4 launches by and for the federal government per year.

Price per launch: What a launch from the North Sea spaceport would cost

DOC did a first launch cost analysis based on 250 possible operating days per year, with calculations for three phases:

• Test phase with 12 launches per year
• Start-up phase with 20 launches per year
• Operational phase with 25 launches per year

The estimates are driven mainly by the costs for chartering both the launch vessel and the support vessel, as well as moving the vessel to and from the launch site.

In the early stage scenario, a break-even analysis comes around to

• EUR 750,000 price per launch in the early phase,
• EUR 668,000 price per launch in the startup phase,
• EUR 587,000 price per launch in the operational phase.

From a financial point of view, this would have made the North Sea launch platform competitive. In 2023 we knew from the SCEPTRE report that launches in the UK were priced between EUR 600,000 and EUR 1,250,000 per launch, while our estimates of Andøya Space resulted in launch prices of up to EUR 1,500,000.

Public money: what was promised and what was delivered

The 2020 plan asked for EUR 22 – 30 million of public money. What we found in budgets, grants and filings is far smaller, and none of it produced a launch.

GOSA itself declared no public grants above EUR 10,000 for 2023 and 2024 in the Bundestag lobby register. We could not confirm whether the OSLIOS grants came out of the EUR 2 million set aside in 2023, so the two amounts should not be added.

GOSA GmbH’s accounts: a company with no staff

The company that was to run Germany’s spaceport never grew beyond a small office account. Its annual accounts show revenue of EUR 40,670 in 2022, EUR 43,711 in 2023 and EUR 24,839 in 2024, almost all spent on services bought from others, and no employees in 2023 or 2024. In 2024 it lost EUR 16,586 and held EUR 58,603 in the bank. The engineering, the ship and the staff all sat with the partner companies.

Over the same years GOSA declared lobbying spending of EUR 50,001 – 60,000 for 2023 and EUR 130,001 – 140,000 for 2024 in the Bundestag lobby register, with half a full-time job in lobbying. The 2024 figure is more than three times the company’s own costs that year, so the partners must have paid for most of it.

From demo plans to liquidation (2023 – 2025)

2023: Budget money and a date for the first launch

In September 2023 the Bundestag budget committee set aside up to EUR 2 million until 2025 for launch infrastructure on a ship, on an initiative of the FDP. A month later, at the BDI space congress, BDI president Siegfried Russwurm announced a first launch from a ship in the German North Sea for April 2024. In November 2023 Sabine von der Recke of OHB joined Arne Gausepohl as managing director and Heiko Felderhoff left. Karsten Behrens followed in January 2024.

2024: The demo that stayed in port

GOSA scaled the first mission down to four small suborbital rockets from German and European operators, launched from a barge in the far north-west of the German waters between June 16th and 30th, 2024. The danger zone reached west into British waters, where spent rockets would fall, so GOSA needed a marine licence from the UK. It did not arrive in time. Local broadcaster buten un binnen later reported that the packed containers stood ready for pick-up, but the licence from Britain was missing, so the first run took place only on land. In the same months the Harren group bought GOSA’s own shares and OHB moved its stake to OHB SE.

In November 2024 a Bundestag inquiry by Die Linke quoted GOSA’s website with “regular launches from 2026”. The federal government answered in December 2024 that permits had to be judged case by case and named no authority in charge, because Germany has no space law.

2025: Wound up, grant handed over, new company

On January 21st, 2025 all four owners (OHB SE, SAL Projects of the Harren group, MediaMobil and BEJU) voted to dissolve GOSA. On February 7th the transport ministry handed the OSLIOS grant notices to Sabine von der Recke, in her role as board member of OHB System, and its press release still named GOSA as the consortium behind the project. GOSA’s 2024 accounts, signed in March 2025, made no mention of the decision.

OSLIOS ended in September 2025 with a design for a “Mobile Multi-User Launch Pad”. On November 11th, 2025 OHB founded the European Spaceport Company, run by Sabine von der Recke, Ulrich Scheib (MT Aerospace) and Arne Gausepohl. The dissolution of GOSA was filed in November 2025, entered in the register on December 3rd, 2025, and published with a call to creditors on December 16th, 2025. In June 2026 the Nordsee-Zeitung reported the end of GOSA under the headline “GOSA-Aus”.

Promised first launches vs what happened

What became of the launch partners

None of the four 2021 partners flew from a GOSA platform. HyImpulse launched its SR75 rocket from Koonibba in Australia in May 2024 and has held a UK licence to fly from SaxaVord since September 2026. Rocket Factory Augsburg, in which OHB holds about 65% of the shares without control, lost a first stage in a test at SaxaVord in August 2024 and has not flown. Skyrora found no public follow-up to its GOSA agreement after 2023. T-Minus was one of the operators named for the 2024 demo.

What comes next: OHB’s European Spaceport Company

OHB kept the idea and moved it into a company it controls alone. The European Spaceport Company GmbH, founded in Bremen in November 2025, plans maritime and land launch sites, mobile and fixed. Its first goals are a European offshore spaceport and a launch complex in Kourou, French Guiana, that different rockets can share. It builds on the OSLIOS design and on MT Aerospace, the OHB subsidiary that has worked on the Kourou launch sites for almost 30 years.

At the launch of the company, Sabine von der Recke said it wanted to launch for the first time within 12 to 18 months, between November 2026 and May 2027. In July 2026 defence minister Boris Pistorius visited OHB and said a launch site run by the Bundeswehr is being considered. OHB CEO Marco Fuchs added: “We started with the North Sea, but the area of interest has expanded considerably.” As of October 7th, 2026 the company has named no launch date, site, ship or licence.

Germany is not the only country with this idea. Denmark’s EuroSpaceport is preparing its own sea platform off Esbjerg.

My opinion on Germany’s Spaceport in the North Sea and GOSA

What I like about Germany’s Spaceport in the North Sea and GOSA

• Critical infrastructure: Europe and particularly Germany have been quite lackluster when it comes to innovation in space and defense. With Baikonur off-limits and Ukraine’s communication infrastructure hanging in the private hands of Starlink, independent space launch capabilities are evidently becoming critical infrastructure for nation states. Maybe the key to get GOSA off the ground is to piggyback on the success of infrastructure projects such as the Baltic Sea LNG terminal or the Giga-Factory in Berlin.
• OHB is getting serious: Granted, the monetary investment is supposed to come from the government, but OHB uses its new space funds primarily for RFA. RFA, however, desperately needs launch slots down the line in case they want to achieve their launch cadence (50+ per year!). This is a good call-option that fits into OHB’s new space strategy.
• OHB did not give up: When GOSA ended, OHB kept the team and the OSLIOS design and put both into its own European Spaceport Company. Two of GOSA’s managing directors run it, and the defence ministry is now talking about launch sites too.

What I don’t like about the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance

• Set your alarm for 2028: We estimate at least four mackerel and two seasnails could suffer emotional distress for every rocket launch. Jokes aside, there’s a non-zero percent chance thoughts like this are enough fuel to keep the Germans debating for half a decade whether unrestricted access to space for the world’s fourth-largest economy might make sense.
• Politics: “Much remains to be clarified with regard to airspace, the North Sea, shipping and offshore wind farms. I’m happy when GOSA is making good progress.” – A quote from Germany’s federal representative for aerospace in February 2023. Feel free to translate the whole article and read 2 pages of vague statements regarding the current government’s stance on the future of new space in Germany.
• Four dates, zero launches: GOSA and its backers named a first launch for 2023, April 2024, June 2024 and “from 2026”. None happened, and the company had no staff of its own to make them happen.
• Public money after the decision to close: The OSLIOS grants of about EUR 870,000 were handed over on February 7th, 2025, 17 days after GOSA’s owners had voted to dissolve it, with a press release that still named GOSA as the consortium behind the project. The money went to the partners and produced a design, not a launch pad.
• No law, no licence: Germany still has no space law in October 2026, and the 2024 demo failed on a British licence. A sea platform near the UK needs British and Norwegian permits for every flight, as the government itself told the Bundestag in November 2025.

Things to watch out for

• The first ESC launch date: The European Spaceport Company’s own window runs from November 2026 to May 2027. Watch for a named site, ship and licence before any date.
• A German space law: Without one, no German authority can license a launch from a ship in the North Sea.
• The Bundeswehr: A military launch site would change who pays and who decides. So far it is “being considered”.
• Further options: Apart from GOSA, the airport Rostock-Laage has also been proposed as a launch site, though as a horizontal one, similar to the spaceport in Cornwall, UK.
• Necessity: A private entity using public funds. It looks like the initial launch will be driven not by economics, but by politics and necessity. We covered the politics, so looking at necessity, I don’t see how there is a lack of launch spots up until 2026, maybe 2027. As of right now, SaxaVord and Andøya plan to offer at least 40 to 60 potential launch spots per year, of which maybe 10 might be used in 2024, and we’re not even including the up and ready Esrange spaceport in Sweden. By October 2026 Isar Aerospace had flown Spectrum twice from Andøya and reached orbit on September 5th, 2026, while no rocket had launched from SaxaVord. Esrange had not hosted an orbital launch either and plans its first for 2028.

Want to know more about German Offshore Spaceport Alliance? Here are some tips:

• Read the initial feasibility study and debate in the Bremen senate from 2020
• Here is the GOSA consortium’s slightly refined proposal from the Small Satellite Conference from August 2022
• The transport ministry’s release on the OSLIOS grants (February 2025, in German)
• The federal government’s answer on rocket launches in the North Sea (December 2024, in German)

Update from October 2026 on the German Offshore Spaceport Alliance

We added the company’s end (owners’ vote of January 2025, liquidation from December 2025), the 2024 demo that did not fly, the ownership changes of 2020 and 2024, GOSA’s accounts and lobbying spend, the public money set aside and granted, every promised first launch, and OHB’s successor company. The analysis from February 2023 stays as written, in past tense.

Structured company information on German Offshore Spaceport Alliance GmbH

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