Small Space News Story Roundup 59

A couple of items for a slow news day

Australia's first orbital launch scrubbed because the rocket's nose fell off

Back in March, as the first quarter of the year was coming to a close, I did an article on launches that were possibly coming before the start of April.  I had seen mention of a rocket called Eris from an Australian company called Gilmour. 

An interesting one that I know absolutely nothing about is from Australia.  A company called Gilmour is launching their Eris rocket's TestFlight1, "NET March 2025" from an Orbital Spaceport in Australia.

As the weeks went by, I loosely kept checking in to see if a date had been announced.  It ended up being quite a bit later than March - this week.  Instead, the nose cone fell off the rocket hours before it was supposed to leave the launch pad Thursday.  

Gilmour, the Australian startup that developed the Eris rocket, announced the setback in a post to the company's social media accounts Thursday.

"During final launch preparations last night, an electrical fault triggered the system that opens the rocket’s nose cone (the payload fairing)," Gilmour posted on LinkedIn. "This happened before any fuel was loaded into the vehicle. Most importantly, no one was injured, and early checks show no damage to the rocket or the launch pad."

Gilmour was gearing up for a launch attempt from a privately owned spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland early Friday, local time (Thursday in the United States). The company's Eris rocket, which was poised for its first test flight, stands about 82 feet (25 meters) tall with its payload fairing intact. It's designed to haul a payload of about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit.

It's unusual not because missions never get ruined by a malfunctioning payload fairing; it's that the malfunction tends to be the other way - not opening when desired or not opening properly.  

As regularly happens, Gilmour had set low expectations for the mission, "the test data we get is the goal of the mission" as they often say.  While the rocket has everything needed to fly to low-Earth orbit, officials said they were looking for just 10 to 20 seconds of stable flight on the first launch, enough to gather data about the performance of the rocket and its unconventional hybrid propulsion system.

Gilmour's Eris rocket stands on its launch pad earlier this week at Bowen Orbital Spaceport in the Australian state of Queensland. Credit: Gilmour Space

SpaceX Extends Falcon 9 Reuses Again

Remember when the talk was that they hoped to get 10 flights out of a Falcon 9 booster?  Then it became 20?  Now the goal is 30.  Fleet leader B1067 just notched its 28th mission on Tuesday morning, May 13th. 

Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center happened on Tuesday, May 13, at 1:02 a.m. EDT (0502 UTC). It was the 100th launch of a single-stick Falcon 9 rocket from this pad.
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Booster landings have truly become routine... A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, SpaceX landed B1067 on its drone ship, Just Read the Instructions, which was positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the Bahamas. This marked the 120th successful landing for this drone ship and the 446th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

There are currently seven Falcon 9s in the fleet with 20 or more flights and a total of 19 boosters counted as actively flying.

Starship Flight Test 9 slips later

As of Friday afternoon, 5/14, NextSpaceflight shows IFT-9 to be Memorial Day, Monday evening, May 26th, at 7:30 EDT, 6:30 Central (local) time.  There have been some reports I hesitate to quote that the FAA has refused to approve SpaceX's launch because their people have problems with the Flight 8 failure analysis.  Since the launch date has moved later at a one day per day rate, there might well be "something else" going on.