PH launches its first rocket from Cagayan in 2027. Target height: 5 kilometers.
The Philippine Space Agency will fly a liquid-fueled sounding rocket carrying a 2 kilogram Filipino-made payload. Space officially begins at 100 kilometers, so this is a first step, not a trip to orbit.
The Philippines will attempt its first liquid-fueled rocket launch from its own soil in 2027, from Cagayan. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced it in his State of the Nation Address on Monday, July 27. His words were direct. "Cagayan is both geographically and economically primed to serve as our gateway to space and host the country's first spaceport."
The specifics are smaller than the phrase gateway to space suggests, and they are worth knowing. It is a sounding rocket, meaning a research rocket that goes up and comes back down instead of circling the planet. It is a Blue Whale class vehicle from Perigee Aerospace, a South Korean launch company. It will carry a locally developed payload weighing up to two kilograms, and the Philippine Space Agency expects it to reach an altitude of at least five kilometers.
The project is run by PhilSA with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority, airport operator Ascend International Gateway, and Perigee. The five signed a memorandum of understanding on March 4, 2026, at the Philippines and Korea Business Forum. Filipino engineers already went through a first round of training with Perigee on small launch vehicles in late 2025.
Why it matters
The pitch is geography. The country sits near the equator with open Pacific water to the east, which is what you want when a rocket needs somewhere empty to fly over and fall into. PhilSA director general Gay Jane Perez argues the world is running short of places to launch from. "As global launch rates continue to accelerate, existing spaceports cannot serve this increasing demand," she said, adding that the Philippines is positioned for "safe and secure rocket launch and recovery operations." If that holds, launching other people's rockets becomes a business the country can sell, the way it sells port access and manufacturing floor space.
Perez says the competitive edge is not just the map but the paperwork. Her stated goal is a "commercial-driven, government-enabled spaceport, with predictable timelines for launch licensing and authorization." Launch companies, she noted, care whether approvals arrive on a schedule they can plan around. That is an unglamorous promise, and it is probably the honest one.
The catch to watch
Marcos also said, "Yes, we are going to launch a rocket into space." On the published numbers, this particular flight does not. Five kilometers is roughly the cruising height of a small plane, and the commonly recognized boundary of space is 100 kilometers. PhilSA is clear that the point is to prove a liquid-fueled launch can happen from Philippine ground and to give Filipino engineers real experience, which is a reasonable goal stated plainly. Note too that the rocket itself is Korean, the Filipino-built part is the two kilogram payload, the spaceport is still only a proposed public-private partnership with no cost or completion date announced, and the government is still drafting the interim rules for launches. Nothing here is fake. It is just earlier and smaller than the headline phrase makes it sound.