Vienna: Austria’s first commercial satellite has successfully launched into space. As the Vienna-based space company Tumbleweed announced on Tuesday, the satellite ‘Oasis Alpha’ was brought into a low Earth orbit with a Falcon-9 rocket from the US space company SpaceX from the Vandenberg Spaceport (USA).

According to Emirates News Agency, the satellite carries standardized containers, referred to as ‘pods’, which contain payloads from four European institutions for conducting experiments in weightlessness. Tumbleweed’s initiative is aimed at facilitating research in weightlessness for institutions and companies, allowing them to bypass the need for expertise in aerospace engineering or the intricacies of legal regulations. The pre-certified ‘pods’ are utilized by customers to insert their own experiments, effectively streamlining the research process in space.