Watch a private German rocket explode during 1st orbital launch attempt from European soil (video)

A dramatic drone video shows Isar Aerospace's first orbital launch attempt, which ended with a fiery crash into the frigid sea about 30 seconds after liftoff.

The Germany company's first Spectrum rocket lifted off Sunday morning (March 30) from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway on the first-ever orbital launch attempt from European soil.

Spectrum cleared the tower but suffered an anomaly shortly thereafter. The rocket flipped over and slammed into the ocean near the pad, sending an orange-tinted cloud high into a clear Arctic sky, as the video shows.

aerial view of an orange-tinted mushroom cloud rising from a sea surrounded by icy mountains — Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket crashed and exploded during its first-ever flight, on March 30, 2025. (Image credit: Isar Aerospace)

The launch pad and surrounding infrastructure appear to have escaped damage, according to Isar Aerospace. The company accentuated the positive about Spectrum's debut, saying the 95-foot-tall (28 meters) rocket performed quite well overall.

"Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success," Isar Aerospace CEO and Co-founder Daniel Metzler said in an emailed statement. "We had a clean liftoff, 30 seconds of flight and even got to validate our flight termination system."

a black and white rocket launching in front of snowy mountains with exhaust plumes — An Isar Aerospace Spectrum rocket lifts off from Andoya Spaceport in Norway on March 30, 2025 on its first flight. (Image credit: Isar Aerospace, Brady Kenniston, NASASpaceflight.com)

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European space officials were similarly sanguine.

"A test flight is exactly that: a test to gather data, learn and improve," European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher said in a different statement on Sunday.

"Everything Isar Aerospace achieved today is remarkable, and they will have lots of data to analyze," he added. "I applaud the teams for getting this far, and I am confident that we will see the next Spectrum on the launch pad ready for test flight 2 liftoff soon."

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Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.