A tiny former police station is now home to Scotland’s space missions and rocket launches

A former REMOTE cop shop is now Scottish Space Missions HQ, we can reveal.

It is hoped that the modest semi will be the nerve center of future rocket launches.

Records show Police Scotland sold the 1960s building in Grantown-on-Spey, Moray, to Shetland Space Center Ltd for £325,000.

Now known as Orbital House, it will be the mainland base for the SaxaVord Spaceport.

A site on the nearby Lamba Ness peninsula on Unst, the northernmost of the Shetland Islands, is being set up to detonate small orbiting satellites.

Local pranksters have now dubbed the old police station “Space 999” – after the 1970s TV series Space 1999 starring Martin Landau.

Tonight, Frank Strang, CEO of SaxaVord, said: “This will provide our ever-expanding team with the office space needed as the business grows to meet the demands of the Scottish space industry.

“SaxaVord is a Highlands and Islands company at heart, with the Grantown office complementing the spaceport site in Unst, Shetland, at the former RAF base Saxa Vord and on the Lamba Ness peninsula where the rockets will take off to deliver small satellite payloads into orbit.”

The proposed spaceport and three launch pads were approved by advisers last month.

It is hoped that the first rocket launch can take place before the end of the year.

But SaxaVord and the rocket company responsible for sending the spacecraft will first need a license from the UK Civil Aviation Authority.

It will take, at a minimum, six months for the spaceport to be completed from the application; and nine months for the rocket operator.

Planning approval for the Unst facility became more possible last month when Historic Environment Scotland withdrew its objection to the spaceport.

The agency had expressed concerns that the development could negatively impact the remains of a World War II radar station.

But he later admitted that the construction could be done sensitively and would benefit Shetland economically.

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