Eris 1 on the Bowen Orbital Spaceport launchpad during a dry test. Photo: Gilmour Space.
The quiet town of Bowen on Queensland’s Whitsunday Coast is abuzz this week as an important milestone in Australia’s ambitions to develop a sovereign space industry nears.
Gold Coast-based Gilmour Space has been cleared to fly the first Australian-designed-and-developed rocket capable of reaching orbit. A two-week launch window from its site northwest of Bowen opens Thursday 15 May.
The Eris 1 rocket is a three-stage vehicle capable of placing payloads weighing up to 300 kg into orbit. Gilmour designed and developed the rocket; subcontractors from across Australia have supplied components for the vehicle.
The launch has been a long time coming. The vehicle was ready to fly more than a year ago. But with a cautious crawl, walk, run approach by regulators – the Australian Space Agency (ASA) and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) – clearance for flight from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport (BOS) has now been granted.
The Eris 1 was moved from its vehicle assembly building at BOS to the launch pad on the afternoon of 13 May. The launch window will be from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm each day of the two-week opening.
The company is playing its cards close to its chest as to what time it will launch, saying only it won’t launch until all pending pre-flight checks are complete and the weather is suitable.
In a social media post on Thursday morning, 15 May, Gilmour said it had scrubbed plans to launch on Thursday because the team had “identified an issue in the ground support system during overnight checks” and that its “next target is the Friday morning launch window”.
Company chief executive Adam Gilmour founded the company with his brother James in 2013.
“I’m nervous, but the engineers are reasonably confident, and they are always afraid something is going to go wrong,” Gilmour told the Australian Financial Review.
“Traditionally, there’s been a lot of things that come up. A valve might give you a reading you don’t like or there might be a temperature spike you don’t like. That can make you hold or abort.
“I’m feeling reasonably confident that we will get off the pad. It’s going to be a wild ride for the next three or four days.”
Eris 1 is rolled out from the vehicle assembly building at Bowen Orbital Spaceport on 12 May. Photo: Adam Gilmour LinkedIn.
Low earth orbit (LEO) is the ultimate goal. But if the vehicle successfully clears the launch pad and can maintain stable flight for even a short period, that will be deemed a success.
Gilmour said that even 20 or 30 seconds of flight time would “be fantastic” because it would be possible to measure the performance of the rocket’s unique hybrid design and test numerous other parameters.
He said the mission was to flight test the entire vehicle, including the hybrid propulsion engines, the rocket’s design and structures, software, avionics and GNC systems, as well as the ground support systems and infrastructure the company developed at Bowen.
The data produced from hundreds of sensors on Eris 1 will be used to improve the reliability and performance of the vehicle for future commercial launches.
“If we get off the pad that’s a good sign of a decent amount of engine time,” he told InnovationAus.com on 12 May, adding that the point where the second stage took over at about 70 seconds into the flight – known as Max Q where there is peak dynamic pressure and mechanical stress – was where many rockets failed.
“A lot of them stuff up then,” he said. “If we get through that, we’ll go to the end of the engine burn, stage separation, and it’ll be good.”
Eris 1 will be the first rocket capable of reaching orbit launched from Australian soil in more than 50 years and the first to be designed and manufactured in Australia.
The three-stage 25-metre rocket weighs 34 tonnes and is powered by a proprietary hybrid rocket engine capable of producing 110 kN of thrust. It can place the 300 kg payload into a 500 km equatorial orbit, although for the first flight it will be carrying just a jar of vegemite and a camera.
Gilmour Space is backed by companies including Blackbird Ventures, Main Sequence, Fine Structure Ventures and QIC, superannuation funds HESTA, HostPlus and NGS Super, as well as the City of Gold Coast and Invest Gold Coast.
Original Article published by Andrew McLaughlin on Region Canberra.
