WASHINGTON — Australian company Gilmour Space is targeting the middle of March for the first flight of its Eris rocket, while setting expectations for the vehicle’s debut.
Gilmour Space announced Feb. 24 that the launch window for the first launch of Eris, called TestFlight 1, will open March 15 from the company’s launch site, Bowen Orbital Spaceport in northern Queensland. The announcement came after the company finalized airspace arrangements with Australian aviation regulators.
The company received a launch license from the Australian Space Agency in November. At the time, the company was projecting a launch as soon as early December, but said approvals for airspace closures and documentation of final system checks and tests might push the launch into 2025.
Gilmour Space suffered delays in the license itself, initially expecting to get it last May. The company argued that the Australian Space Agency underestimated the time and resources needed to evaluate the license, the first it has issued for an orbital launch.
The company, while looking forward to the upcoming launch, set expectations for the first flight of a launch vehicle. It noted that the flight could be delayed by days or weeks because of technical problems or poor weather.
There is also the challenge of reaching orbit, given the track record by startups on the first launches of their vehicles. “It’s almost unheard of for a private rocket company to launch successfully to orbit the first time,” acknowledged Adam Gilmour, co-founder and chief executive of Gilmour Space, in a statement.
“Whether we make it off the pad, reach max Q [maximum dynamic pressure], or get all the way to space, what’s important is that every second of flight will deliver valuable data that will improve our rocket’s reliability and performance for future launches,” he said.
If successful, though, Eris would be the first rocket built in Australia to reach orbit, and the first orbital launch from Australia since the British-built Black Arrow rocket launched the Prospero satellite from Woomera in South Australia in October 1971.
TestFlight 1 is primarily intended to collect data on Eris and its systems ahead of future commercial launches. The three-stage vehicle, using hybrid propulsion, is designed to place up to 215 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit in its Block 1 iteration. The rocket will carry a test payload for a line of small satellites Gilmour Space is also developing.
Gilmour Space has raised $140 million Australian ($89.1 million) to date, including a $55 million Australian Series D round a year ago.
