The construction of a private spacedrome in Arctic and the beginning of commercial space flights in the Aurora Borealis is the two key issues of the new agreement signed between Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and the Swedish trust Spaceport.

The new agreement includes a two years research for the conditions of launching suborbital flights from Kiruna airport in Sweden. If everything goes as planned the first flights are bound to start in 2011 or 2012 as project manager of Spaceport Sven Grahn stated. The facilities and the weather conditions must be checked according to Grahn but “we estimate that we would not face any serious problem.”

According to Grahn, two thousands people have already express their interest for participating in such flights. The cost of a flight is estimated to reach the 200,000 dollars or 155,000 euro and the journey will last two hours including 5 minutes in zero gravity.

With the signing of the memorandum of understanding Swedish authorities have to prepare a regulatory regime as the one that U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is doing in the United States as Olle Norberg, head of the Swedish Space Corp. Esrange launch site in Kiruna, said.

It is worth mentioning that only rockets for scientific reasons and weather balloons are being launched from Kiruna airport so far.

Virgin Galactic owned by billionaire Richard Branson has already scheduled space flights from the U.S. in 2008.