BRITISH tourists could soon be taking intergalactic holidays thanks to the country’s first ever SPACEPORT.

Idyllic Highland county Sutherland, in the north of Scotland, has been chosen to be the UK’s first space travel hub.

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Scotland could one day be used as a launch site for heavy-duty Soyuz-2 rockets

Business Secretary Greg Clark announced that the rural community had beaten off stiff competition from Prestwick, Ayrshire, Unst in the Shetlands and Newquay airport, Cornwall to be handed the exciting new development.

The spaceport will host launches of satellites and rockets into outer space before eventually having commercial flights outside our atmosphere.

Space flights could be worth £4bn to the UK economy in the next decade, said Mr Clark.

Announcing the deal, the government minister said the spaceport would herald a “new British Space Age”.

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The Highland region of Sutherland has been chosen as the site of the UK's first ever spaceport

Alamy

The area of northern Scotland is known as its haunting beauty and clear skies

The spaceport could pave the way for more Brits in space

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Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson wants a UK spaceport to launch his sub-orbital craft from

Courtesy NASA / JPL-Caltech

What posters selling intergalactic holiday packages could look like in the future

A regulatory framework for passengers trips into space has been to be established, the Mirror reports.

However, the House of Commons did pass the Space Industry Bill which has paved the way for the Highland spaceport.

The Sutherland proposal said the A’Mhoine peninsular was perfect for blasting rockets out of the planet - thanks to its clear skies, sparse population and abundance of land.

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Once a mecca for ship building, Glasgow now builds more space satellites than any other European city.

Richard Branson is also keen on the idea, hoping to use a Brit spaceport as somewhere he can launch commercial joy rides for space tourists, while the site could also be useful for launching government-backed sub-orbital science missions.

A UK space agency could possibly even add to the £50m of spaceport funding announced by the government last year.

First successful test flight of Virgin Galactic's new space tourism rocket

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