The spaceship hovered for less than a minute before crashing in a giant plume of smoke, but it was history-making nonetheless \u2013 the attempted launch of an orbital rocket designed and made in Australia.<\/p>\n
The Eris rocket was built by Gold Coast-based Gilmour Space and briefly blasted off from the Bowen orbital spaceport in north Queensland<\/a> on Wednesday morning, after months of waiting for the right conditions.<\/p>\n The orbit attempt was watched on from the surrounding hills by enthusiasts and streamed live by the likes of YouTuber Josh Keegan, also known as Aussienaut.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cOK we\u2019re going, we\u2019re going, it\u2019s going!\u201d Keegan said with breathless excitement after a second day of patient watching \u2013 but the celebrations did not last long.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s gone, it\u2019s gone,\u201d Keegan said seconds later. \u201cOh no, it didn\u2019t go, there wasn\u2019t sufficient thrust to actually keep it up.<\/p>\n The 23-metre-long, 30-tonne Eris rocket was launched from the Bowen orbital spaceport after months of waiting for the right conditions. Photograph: Gilmour Space Technologies<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that\u2019s the end of the Eris rocket. We have a cloud, and that\u2019s the end.\u201d<\/p>\n But while the billow of smoke may have marked the end of Eris, Gilmour and the nascent Australian space industry hope this failed orbit attempt will prove just a beginning.<\/p>\n Gilmour Space<\/a> issued a statement shortly afterwards saying Eris\u2019s 14 seconds of flight brought Australia closer to the club of six nations who regularly launch spacecraft to orbit.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a maiden test flight, especially after an extended 18-month wait on the pad for final approvals, this is a strong result and a major step forward for Australia\u2019s sovereign space capability,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n \u201cMost importantly, the team is safe and energised for Test Flight 2.\u201d<\/p>\n The company\u2019s CEO, Adam Gilmour, posted on social media that he was happy with the launch attempt.<\/p>\n \u201cGot off the Pad, I am happy,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOf course I would have liked more flight time but happy with this.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The 23-metre-long, 30-tonne rocket was covered in sensors from which the Queensland company will hope to glean information to assist future launch attempts.<\/p>\n One Giant Leap Australia Foundation, which develops education programs geared toward growing a future workforce in the space industry, was among those to congratulate Gilmour Space for a \u201csterling effort\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only way to learn is to fail forward,\u201d it posted on social media. \u201cWe know more today than we did yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilmour Space was poised to launch on Tuesday but winds were too strong. It had also sought to launch in May but did not.<\/p>\n The company received $5m from the Australian government for its Eris launch vehicle last week to develop its next-generation liquid rocket engine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The spaceship hovered for less than a minute before crashing in a giant plume of smoke, but it…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":104002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-104001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114940564253407506","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}