It is best known for its Viking heritage and hardy cliff-dwelling ponies but now Shetland is poised to enter the space race.
Skyrora, a technology company with its headquarters in Edinburgh, has agreed a deal for scores of rocket launches over the next decade from a site on Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland islands.
No rocket has ever been blasted into space from British soil, but the company hopes to begin its first launches from the rocky outpost, which has a population of 600, next year.
Skyrora hopes to use the SaxaVord spaceport, the most northerly settlement on Unst, to deliver up to 16 launches a year by 2030.
Unst was home to an RAF radar station which monitored Soviet aircraft during the
