Spaceflight

Australia’s new launch complex plans 1st liftoff

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November 4, 2022

Australia's new launch complex: Men standing with rocket in background. — Dr. Matthew Tetlow, CEO Inovor Technologies; Dr. Yen-Sen Chen, CEO and Founder ATSpace; Ian Spencer, CEO Asension; and Lloyd Damp, CEO Southern Launch; pose before a Kestrel I rocket at the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex in South Australia. The group hopes to launch the test flight in November 2022. It will mark the 1st liftoff from the complex. Image via Southern Launch.

Australia’s new launch complex plans for 1st launch

Last June saw the first space launch from Australia in 25 years. NASA sent up an X-ray mission to observe nearby stars Alpha Centauri A and B from the Arnhem Space Center in Australia’s Northern Territory. And now a group of Aussie aerospace companies is ready to lift off again from Australia. They’re hoping to send up a suborbital rocket this month (November 2022) from Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex at the edge of the Great Australian Bight, a massive open bay near the city of Adelaide, off the coast of the state of South Australia. This will be the first-ever launch from Whalers Way.

Ian Spencer, CEO of Asension, one of the aerospace companies involved, said the launch marks a new era for Australian spaceflight:

Having access to space from Australian soil is a game changer for our R&D efforts. This launch will accelerate the development of our technology in a way that has not previously been possible. This means that we can provide greater sovereign capability sooner.

Asension is an Australian electronic warfare technology company.

Launching the Kestrel I

The Australian aerospace companies said they will be flying a sounding rocket to test a new tracking method:

The ‘Kestrel I’ launch vehicle is a 10-meter (33-foot), two-stage, sub-orbital rocket. The rocket will launch from the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex and reach an altitude of over 200 kilometers (124 miles) above Earth. The trajectory of the launch will be over the Southern Ocean with the total time of flight approximately 10 minutes.

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To keep tabs on the Kestrel as it flies, the group won’t gather telemetry the old-fashioned way. Instead, they intend to have the rocket call them. They said:

The Southern Launch payload will use existing satellite phone technology to track the rocket as it travels through space, removing the need for traditional ground-based infrastructure. This mission will provide vital data to prove the capability of this ground-breaking technology and serves as a proof of concept for future product development.

The companies involved will also test their communication protocols while gathering data for future Kestrel flights to orbit, they said. ATSpace, which manufactures the Kestrel line, is developing a three-stage orbital vehicle.

Bottom line: Some Australian companies plan a suborbital rocket launch in November 2022 from Australia’s new launch complex, Whalers Way. It’ll be a 1st launch fron this site.

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November 4, 2022

Spaceflight

Dave Adalian

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About the Author:

Award-winning reporter and editor Dave Adalian's love affair with the cosmos began during a long-ago summer school trip to the storied and venerable Lick Observatory atop California's Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose in the foggy Diablos Mountain Range and far above Monterey Bay at the edge of the endless blue Pacific Ocean. That field trip goes on today, as Dave still pursues his nocturnal adventures, perched in the darkness at his telescope's eyepiece or chasing wandering stars through the fields of night with the unaided eye. A lifelong resident of California's Tulare County - an agricultural paradise where the Great San Joaquin Valley meets the Sierra Nevada in endless miles of grass-covered foothills - Dave grew up in a wilderness larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, one choked with the greatest diversity of flora and fauna in the US, one which passes its nights beneath pitch black skies rising over the some of highest mountain peaks and greatest roadless areas on the North American continent. Dave studied English, American literature and mass communications at the College of the Sequoias and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has worked as a reporter and editor for a number of news publications on- and offline during a career spanning nearly 30 years so far. His fondest literary hope is to share his passion for astronomy and all things cosmic with anyone who wants to join in the adventure and explore the universe's past, present and future.

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Australia’s new launch complex plans 1st liftoff