The state of Oklahoma has been selected by suborbital flight startup Dawn Aerospace as the location for its first operational base in the United States.
Dawn Aerospace’s ‘Aurora’ aircraft is designed to be capable of making multiple trips per day to the vicinity of the Karman Line – the altitude that demarcates the boundary of space, widely considered to be around 100 kilometers from the ground.
The startup, which has so far been performing its flight tests in New Zealand, has signed an agreement with the Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority (OSIDA) to operate the Aurora Mk II aircraft out of the Oklahoma Air and Space Port in Burns Flat, western Oklahoma, from 2027.
Because of the frequent reutilization of the Aurora Mk II aircraft, it is expected that each flight will cost in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, facilitating testing and experimentation on the effects of microgravity.
Under the terms of the agreement, Dawn Aerospace will supply the aircraft and ground control station and will base its own operations team on site, while educational and research institutions in Oklahoma will have free access to the aircraft for research purposes for the first year of operations.
The Aurora Mk II is an unmanned, remotely operated aircraft with a payload of 5 kg (11 lbs). As of early June 2025, Dawn Aerospace has conducted 58 successful test flights of the Aurora prototype, including its first supersonic flight in November 2024. In May 2025, the startup announced that it had opened its order book and was starting to accept orders from any commercial operators interested in acquiring its future suborbital aircraft.
