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Europe isn't on or remotely near the equator, which is somewhat favorable for launches.
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> The German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space Center in northern Norway today

To speculate, they could be targeting a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit

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ESA launches French Guiana. Since it is cheaper to launch closer to the equator with the extra speed provided by the earth's rotation.
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For satellites that should be in Sun-synchronous orbit Andøy is a great place to launch from
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Really comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator.

It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.

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French Guiana is not a colony, it is a region of France. People who live there have the same constitutional rights as anyone living in mainland France.

It has the same status in France as Alaska does in the US.

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That's legally true, but I think it misses the distinction between formal political status and the legacy of colonialism. French Guiana is an overseas department of France, and its residents have French citizenship and constitutional rights. But that doesn't mean the historical relationship was equivalent to mainland France, or that the effects of that history disappeared when the legal status changed.

The same point applies elsewhere: Guinea became independent from French colonial rule in 1958, but independence didn't magically erase the economic structures, institutions, and inequalities inherited from colonialism. Today, a large share of Guinea's population still lives in poverty despite the country's enormous natural-resource wealth.

So "it's not a colony" is correct as a matter of constitutional law. But using that fact to imply that colonial history is irrelevant to present-day economic and social conditions is a much stronger claim, and one that's harder to defend.

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While I agree with your analysis, would you think is the best to use the same generic term "colonialism" for both the situations in French Guyana and let's say Venezuela in the last year? I would prefer more words to differentiate a bit, but maybe that's just me.
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How does it compare to Alaska? Wasn't it purchased as a colony from russians to exploit Alaskan gold with complete disreagrd for opinion of the native population?
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A better comparison is with Hawaii.
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Alaska is a colony is well, and so is the rest of North America.

We don't think of the US and Canada as colonies because the vast majority of the native population was genocided.

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They mostly died from European diseases without ever meeting a European. It wasn't even planned or known by the European "visitors".
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It's a colony even if it's legally part of France.

(Had to check: free movement does apply to Guianans, but in the other direction it's not part of Schengen)

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France has only one citizenship, everyone holds the same French passport so everyone has the same freedom of movement within the EU.

It's not in Schengen, like most overseas territories in the EU, to limit illegal immigration into the EU (see Ceuta as well).

I don't thing the term "colony" holds. It is anachronic and refers to a system that no longer exists.

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Ireland is not part of Schengen as well for example, it is because that is much harder to practically achieve for folks living on islands.
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Ireland is not part of Schengen because the UK never was (and they wanted to keep the Common Travel Area).
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Guianans tend to get pissed off if outsiders suggest in any way that they are any different as a French region from l'Hexagone (the French mainland). Your banging on about colonies would not be well received there.
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For what it's worth, Metropolitan France used to claim Algeria wasn't a colony either.
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Becoming French was an amazingly good reward for being pirates and slave traders.
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A fully loaded Falcon 9 carries less kerosene than 1 (one single) A380. What level of concerntrolling is this?
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>Really comes in handy to still have a couple of colonies near the equator.

>It's also better to have the massive amounts of emissions far away from your own population.

That's the dumbest comment i read since a long time, thanks.

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> How can it be the first European rocket?

Not at all. You've missed the "Private" in the headline. And that it apparently is.

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Article says Western Europe, but Norway is in Northern Europe.

“First rocket to launch from Europe outside Russia” would have been perfectly correct.

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In the political sense, «Western Europe» is typically taken to be «NATO Europe», and «Eastern Europe» is «Warsaw Pact Europe». Which is different from a strict geographic definition.
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That is also not correct anymore as Northern countries were reallocated to include the Baltics in UN as an example.
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They launch from Guiana afaik
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French Guiana to be exact, which is a different country
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Edit: Misread
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They meant French Guiana is a different country to Guyana... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guianas
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It isn't. Plesetsk is in European Russia and was built to prevent overreliance on Baikonur
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You are thinking about Vostochny in Russian Far East. Plesetsk was an early ICBM launch site that started doing orbital launches in 1966. It was the busiest spaceport in Soviet times, and the cumulative number of orbital launches from Plesetsk still probably exceeds those from Florida.
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No, I'm thinking of Plesetsk because it is in Europe. It is much nearer to Moscow than Baikonur is. Since the USSR broke up, this is even more the case.
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The French used to launch their rockets from Algeria. Their first satellite was launched from there. Since then they moved to (French) Guiana.

The UK launched from Australia.

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And Russia launches some rockets from Plesetsk, in Europe.
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