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Date Published: 17/10/2022

San Javier wants to turn the old airport into the new home of the Spanish NASA

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The space agency should be operational in the Murcia municipality next year

San Javier wants to turn the old airport into the new home of the Spanish NASA

In addition to being famous in the field of aviation, the municipality of San Javier has now set its sights on space by submitting plans to establish the future Spanish Space Agency on the site of the old airport, which closed its doors in 2019. Announcing the project, regional president Fernando López Miras assured that “there is no better place than San Javier in the whole of Spain to house this Agency, since no other possible venue has better meteorological, geographical, strategic and technical conditions.”

The old airport seems like the obvious choice, since San Javier has been home to the General Air Academy (AGA), which trains army pilots and astronauts, since 1943 and is also the headquarters of the first air-naval base in Spain.

Added to these impressive credentials is the fact that it already has complete and operational facilities, meaning that the Space Agency base could be up and running “immediately”. If it goes ahead, it would dampen once and for all any hopes that San Javier Airport may be reopened as a passenger airport after it was replaced as Murcia’s international hub by Corvera Airport. To move the project along, the Ministry of Defense will cede San Javier airport to the community this week to use for the next 75 years.

According to the president, San Javier meets all of the conditions required for a Space Agency, particularly since the airport is located in a “maximum security environment” within a military air base. It’s also ideally situated close to both Murcia and Alicante airports and Cartagena port, and is connected to several other regions by the a high-speed train service, with the AVE scheduled to arrive next December.

“Our clear blue skies have meant that the Region has always been one of the great training and teaching centres for pilots, and also for skydivers,” López Miras said, adding that the base will be operational in the first quarter of 2023, with a budget of 500 million euros and the creation of more than 70 jobs.

Image: CARM

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