A research rocket that was launched by Sweden’s Space Corp early on Tuesday from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden malfunctioned and landed 15 km inside neighbouring Norway. The rocket reached an altitude of 250 kilometers where experiments were carried out in zero gravity, the agency said in a statement.

“It landed in the mountains at 1,000 meters’ altitude, and 10 kilometers from the closest settlement,” Philip Ohlsson, head of communications at SSC, told the media on Tuesday.

There are routines in place when things go wrong and we have informed both the Swedish and Norwegian governments, he said.

The Swedish government has started work on retrieving the payload and an investigation is being launched to determine the technical details behind the unplanned flight path, the space agency said.

“The Norwegian authorities take any unauthorized activity on the Norwegian side of the border very seriously,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said via e-mail.

In cases of any border violation, those responsible should immediately inform the relevant Norwegian authorities, which included the foreign ministry, through the right channels, the spokesperson said. The ministry had not received a formal notification of the incident from the Swedish authorities, she added.

Work on Norwegian territory to salvage any wreckage also required prior consent, the spokesperson said.

The Norwegian foreign ministry said it was not aware of whether there was any damage to the surroundings, while a SSC spokesperson said the rocket came down far from any settlement.

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