Andoya Rocket Range, Nordland
The island of Andoya is located in the northern coast of Norway and it's name means "Island of the Ducks" due to the extensive flocks of these birds that overwhelm their cliffs and rocky coasts each spring.
There in March 1960, the Norwegian Ministry of Defense ordered the construction of a missile range, authorizing the launching of small American vectors for geophysical and astrophysical research, from a precarious installation located about 3 km east of the town of Andennes. The first launch (a Norwegian-Danish rocket) took place on August 18th, 1962.
At first the facility comprised only a few containers acting as houses and laboratories, wich remained occupied only during the time in which the campaigns were developed.
In 1964 an agreement was settled down between the Norgewian Space Comission and the Bergen University to use the island for the first time as a base to launch stratospheric balloons within the framework of a scientific program developed for the International Year of the Quiet Sun. The effort named POCIBO (Polar Circling Balloon Observatory) was carried out under the leadership of Dr.James R. Wrinkler from the University of Minnesota.
These balloon launches took place between 8 and 23 of July that year from the airfield in Andoya, located to the east of Andennes. The objective was to make long duration flights over Greenland and the Islands of the north of Canada. Although the operations were developed without trouble from the operational point of view, the 4 launches were a failure due to structural problems in the balloons wich in most of the cases not even could reach their float altitude. Despite the failures, is worth to emphasize that this was the first organized attempt to make a transatlantic flight using a stratospheric balloon.
Currently the facilities for the launching of rockets are known as the Andoya Rocket Range (ARR) and are operated by the Norwegian Space Center with participation of Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace. The complex is located on the coast of the island in one narrow strip between the sea and a small mountainous chain that crosses all its geography.
Although the first launches of sounding rockets, were of American origin, as of 1966 the ESRO (precursory of the European Space Agency - ESA) put their eyes in Andoya (while waiting the conclusion of the construction of ESRANGE) and launched several Centaur and Dragon French rockets. Since then, near 900 vectors with scientific payloads have been sent to the suborbital space from some of the 7 launch platforms of the complex.
Andoya's location is special adecuate to make research on the aurora and the patterns of atmospheric circulation in the Arctic. Also for that reason near 450 experiments using stratospheric balloons were carried out from there, within national as well international cooperative projects.
Starting on 1997, the ARR has expanded their operational range managing another launch site located in Ny-Alesund, on the Svalbard Islands (78º North latitude), from where in recent years were launched too several balloons.
At the moment an agreement with the Italian Space Agency exists (ASI) to help in the development of a long duration balloon launch facility located in Longyearbyen, in the same island.
