Transcript
Alice Carruth (0:01)
You're listening to the N2K Space Network.
Dave (0:11)
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Alice Carruth (0:45)
The Middle east are no strangers to the global space industry. Saudi Arabia and the UAE both have established national space agencies and made bold investments in the space industry in recent years. But what about the Sultanate of Oman? Let's find out more about the region's first commercial spaceport. This is T minus Deep Space. I'm Alice Carruth. In 2024, Oman held the first suborbital launch at the Atlac spaceport. I found out more from Atlac's chief commercial officer, Yolanda Al Ryami.
Yolanda Al Ryami (1:40)
So my name is Yolanda Ryami. I am the current Chief Commercial Officer at ATLA Spaceport. I've joined about a year and a half ago. I look after the marketing side of the business as well as sales and business development and events management. So ETLAG has actually grown in size more than double over the last one year and a lot of that has been in my department so we've been accelerating all the activities there. Before joining Etlach I was in Omantel which is a telecommunications company, the national telecom in Oman and I was working in the customer journey management department as well as the Product management department. And prior to that I was actually in Singapore working at Apple and strategy and operations primarily all of the operations happening in Asia Pacific, various products, some of the flagships that everybody knows like iPhone and AirPods. And then prior to that I was in the US, lived there for quite a while, did all of my education in the us Industrial Engineering and an mba.
Alice Carruth (2:59)
I'm really excited to be talking to you today because you are bringing together, like I say, two of my favorite subjects, spaceports in the Middle East. Give us the pitch. Why Oman? And why is ATLAG spaceport been established over there?
Yolanda Al Ryami (3:12)
So Oman first started looking into what they can do in space a few years ago. If you go back about five to 10 years there wasn't much activity in space and when the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology looked into expanding its presence in the space sector, they first looked at the geography and thought that hey, this is something that we naturally have and it's an Asset that you can't buy anywhere. And so the idea came to look for or to consider what are the strategic advantages that we can leverage in addition to any commercial advantages. So they started looking into a location. Etah is positioned at approximately 18 degrees in latitude in collaboration with NASCOM, the National Aerospace services company, which happens to now be the holding company of atlaq alongside with Amantel as an investor. And when they found that 18 degrees is quite good and competitive globally, turned out to be just a natural fit. It is the right investment. And so that's a natural asset that Oman has. And ETLAB decided to tap into that and maximize the benefit that we can get from launching here. So we have access to equatorial orbits, sun synchronous and polar orbits, so we have a clear downrange clearance over the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. So atla, it's in a location called, which is approximately five to six hour drive from the capital and about an hour and a half away from Dokkum is the spaceport location. And being in United Dokkum, the population density is very low, which helps us a lot in terms of safety and keeping launches accessible and from a regulatory perspective, compliant. The services that we're offering at ATLAQ spaceport are quite comprehensive. We do intend for the master plan of ATLAC to be a one stop shop where launchers can come in, bring in their vehicles. They would have a place to store multiple vehicles under development. They would have all of the facilities required for launch, such as payload integration facilities, testing of their equipment, electronics and software and fluids, and even engine testing or so static fire testing. We would have client offices for them to bring in their satellite clients and host VIPs if needed. We would have mission control centers, range control centers and antenna farms. All of the equipment needed to track a launch. All that alongside with the accommodations. So people staying on site close to where the work is done can maximize their efficiency, especially during a campaign. In our master plan we're accommodating for three launchpads and that would be for micro vehicles, medium class vehicles and heavy lift vehicles. So we're offering also the opportunity for clients to scale up as they're growing their operations and their access to space. From a logistics standpoint, we're very close to a Special Economic Zone. The Docham Special Economic Zone has quite a few companies operating heavy industries. We have a refinery there. So in the long term we can have quick and sustainable access to propellants. There's the airport, Dokhon Airport, which can accommodate the biggest aircraft. There's also the dokkamport, there's the deep sea port and quite a few other industrial companies. And lastly, I would say from a commercial standpoint, we have a business model that is tailored to all sizes of launchers. It is flexible, it is meant to help companies reduce their operating expenditure. Because we take on many of the services that a launcher might bring on their own or we can lead it up to the launcher to bring in those services so they can kind of cost optimize as they look to conduct an operation. In terms of weather, it's very predictable. So we know exactly when we can launch. Like traditionally the spaceports around the world are governed by the by regulators or they're say administered by the regulators and the regulator is the operator, for example NASA and historically also ESA and gnes. But now we're looking at the commercial side of it. And what we figured is if we can come in, if we can target the private launchers at prices that are much more reasonable than the institutional stay sports, we have a double advantage here, commercial side and a location advantage.