A Scottish rocket company, headquartered in Glasgow with a factory in Cumbernauld, building launch vehicles for small satellites and using a fuel made from plastic waste.
Skyrora designs, builds and launches rockets, mainly to carry small satellites into space. Its range includes Skyrora XL, a planned three-stage orbital rocket meant to carry about 315 kilograms into a polar or sun-synchronous orbit (a path that passes over the poles). It also makes the smaller Skylark rockets, including Skylark L, a suborbital vehicle designed to lift 60 kilogram payloads to about 100 kilometres, plus a Space Tug upper stage. Its engines include the Skyforce-2, a 70 kilonewton engine with 3D-printed parts. The company also promotes Ecosene, a kerosene-type fuel made from plastic waste that cannot be recycled, and says it produces 45% less greenhouse gas than conventional fuel.
Volodymyr Levykin founded Skyrora in 2017 and is its chief executive. The company's website describes its aim as making space access fast and reliable while exploring space responsibly, with the goal of improving life on Earth. It says education and sustainability are central: it works to reduce its own waste and emissions, favours local and sustainable suppliers, and researches greener space technology. In earlier press material it also described an ambition to bring back dedicated, responsive UK launches, harking back to Britain's Black Arrow rocket of the 1970s.
Skyrora is a very Scottish company. Its website gives its headquarters as Glasgow, though earlier reports describe an office at 108 Princes Street in Edinburgh. Rockets are built at its Vehicle Assembly Building in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, a site of about 55,000 square feet with a large yard. Engines are tested at a facility in Midlothian, and early flights and a static fire test took place at Kildermorie Estate in Ross-shire. Its planned launch site is SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, where in August 2025 it received the first UK launch licence given to a UK-based rocket company, covering up to 16 Skylark L launches a year. Wikipedia reports a hot-fire test of a scaled-down Skyrora XL at Machrihanish in October 2026.
On people and culture, the company says its staff volunteer in STEM activities and support local schools and businesses. Its Head of Engineering, Dr Jack James Marlow, has said the Cumbernauld site lets the company take direct charge of the development cycle in-house. Wikipedia reports a headcount of 160 in 2022, which is an older figure, and lists astronaut Tim Peake among the board members. These are the company's own descriptions and reports, not independent checks.
A rocket company needs many kinds of people. There are propulsion and structures engineers, designers who work with 3D printing, technicians who build and test engines, software and avionics specialists, safety and regulatory experts, and business staff such as the head of government affairs, Alan Thompson. A 2022 article said the Cumbernauld site alone aimed to provide up to 100 technical and business roles. Maths, physics, engineering and computing are all useful starting points.
Website: www.skyrora.com
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