STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A research rocket launched by Sweden Space Corp early on Monday from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden malfunctioned and landed 15 km (9.32 miles) inside neighbouring Norway.
The rocket reached an altitude of 250 km where experiments were carried out in zero gravity, the agency said in a statement.
“It landed in the mountains at 1,000 meters altitude, and 10 kilometers from the closest settlement,” Philip Ohlsson, head of communications at SSC, told Reuters on Tuesday.
There are routines in place when things go wrong and we inform both Swedish and Norwegian governments, and other actors, he said.
Work on retrieving the payload is underway and an investigation is being launched to determine the technical details behind the unplanned flight path, the agency said.
Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority was not immediately available for a comment.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Marie Mannes in Stockholm; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
