Deep in the Swedish forest, where reindeer roam and scientists ski in winter, lies one of Europe's hopes for a spaceport that can ultimately compete with the United States, China and Russia.

For decades, Europe has relied upon the U.S. for its security among the stars. But the Trump administration’s “America First” policies, plus a commercial market that’s growing exponentially, has prompted Europeans to rethink their approach.

The state-owned Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, is among the sites building out orbital rocket programs to allow Europe to advance in the global space race and launch satellites from the continent's mainland.

Currently, Europe's only space base capable of launching rockets and satellites into orbit is in the sparsely populated French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America that's roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of the equator. Otherwise, Europe borrows NASA's Cape Canaveral in Florida.

In March, Isar Aerospace launched the first test flight of its orbital launch vehicle from the Andøya Spaceport, another site that's part of Europe's efforts to expand its presence in space, on an island in northern Norway.

While the rocket crashed into the sea 30 seconds after liftoff, the private German aerospace company had largely ruled out the possibility of the rocket reaching orbit on its first complete flight and deemed the short journey a success.

Esrange and Andøya date back to the 1960s, and much of their space-bound appeal stems from their far-north geography on Earth.

Esrange, for example, is owned and operated by the Swedish Space Corporation and based more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.

The space center's 30-plus antennas can more easily communicate with satellites orbiting the North Pole compared to infrastructure that’s near the equator.

“There is a huge growing need for more satellites in orbit,” explained Ulrika Unell, president of the Swedish Space Corporation’s orbital launch and rocket test division.

“We will go from 8,000 to 55,000 satellites until 2030. So that is a booming market or business opportunity. And we want to be in there," she said.

Most important, perhaps, is the size of the base. It encompasses 6 square kilometers (2.3 square miles), where experts conduct Martian lander parachute tests, suborbital rocket launches and stratospheric balloon experiments.

But it's Esrange's rocket landing zone — 5,200 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) of birch, pine and spruce trees spread north across the Swedish tundra, nearly to the Norwegian and Finnish borders — that is its key selling point.

The territory is uninhabited besides the Sami Indigenous reindeer herders who sometimes pass through, and the space center alerts them before any tests occur. The emptiness of the landscape allows scientists to launch and easily recover material for further study.

Andøya's remote location on a Norwegian island, meanwhile, means rockets can safely crash down into the sea without risking harm to humans.

During his first week in office earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his $175 billion “Golden Dome” missile defense system to protect America from long-range missiles.

If successful, it would mark the first time the U.S. would place weapons in space that are meant to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch. It follows China’s 2021 groundbreaking launch of a warhead system that went into orbit before reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

Europe currently, however, does not have the same capacities and has for decades banked on the U.S. for its security and defense.

But U.S. Vice President JD Vance, during a speech in February at the Munich Security Conference, warned Europe against continuing to rely upon America and urged officials to “step up in a big way” to provide for the defense of the continent.

Vance's remarks, as well as concerns over former Trump ally and tech billionaire Elon Musk's politics potentially impacting Ukraine's dependence on his Starlink satellite system in its war with Russia, alarmed European leaders.

Beyond the space race between global superpowers, commercial companies are taking to the skies.

Musk's SpaceX and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ rocket company Blue Origin, among others, have proven that space isn't limited to governmental agencies like NASA, and that there's a lot of money to be made in the solar system.

The number of satellites in space is expected to skyrocket in the next five years.

And the Swedish Space Corporation, with its burgeoning orbital launch and rocket test division at Esrange, is among those seeking to capitalize on those dollars.