Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), from Augsburg, Germany, appears to have made a significant step toward the first vertical orbital launch attempt from the United Kingdom (UK). On May 16, RFA successfully conducted an unannounced first static fire of the first stage of its RFA ONE rocket.
A video showing the test has since been released, with an accompanying update saying, “We hot-fired a total of four Helix engines, igniting one by one at four-second intervals. All engines ran simultaneously for 8 seconds with a total hot-fire duration of 20 seconds. The test ran flawlessly through start-up, steady-state and shutdown.”