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Eris Rocket from Gilmour Space starts for the first time on July 29, 2025. | Credit: Gilmour Space Technologies
Australia now has a local orbital start -up attempt in the belt.
The company Gilmour Space gave up this milestone today (July 29) and sent its first Eris rocket sky around 6.35 p.m. Edt (2235 GMT; 8:35 a.m. local Australian era) from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in Coastal Queensland.
Eris didn’t get far. The rocket started to the side shortly after the pad climbed and fell back to earth just 14 seconds after retreat. It looked very similar to the third orbital start -up attempt by the California company Astra, which in August 2021 contained a similar side slide from the pad.
This result was anything but unexpected; After all, it is rare that a rocket has its first increase of ever offs ACE. And Gilmour Space was not for the full success today.
“Regardless of whether we can make it out of the pad, reach Max Q or reach it until space, it is important that every second of the flight provides valuable data that improve the reliability and performance of our rocket for future starts,” said the company about the mission, which was known in February as ERIS-1.
Gilmour Space also had an optimistic note after the start. “Today, Eris was the first #australianmade Orbital rocket that started from Australian soil -~ 14 Flight, 23s Motor Burn. Big step for the starting capacity. Team sure, data in hand, the test for test 2,” said the company this evening in an X -Post that shared two photos of the cancellation shine.
“Getting out of the pad and in flight is a big step forward for every new rocket program,” said Adam Gilmour, CEO of Gilmour Space, in an e -mail declaration this evening. “This was the first real test of our rocket systems, our drive technology and our space driver – and it has been proven that a lot of what we built works.”
There were no injuries and no “disadvantageous environmental impact” based on the starting tanomaly, representatives of the company said in the declaration.
Today’s start was for a long time. Gilmour Space, which is based on Australia’s Gold Coast, originally aimed in March, but this plan was sunk by tropical cyclone Alfred.
The company then aimed in mid -May, but was thwarted by a technical problem: On May 15, the cardboard cladding of Eris, the Clamshell, and the satellites protected during the start, was unexpectedly dipped while the rocket was on the pad.
The culprit was a surprise “power boost, which was caused by electrical re -feed from downstream devices,” said Gilmour Space on May 30th in an X post.
After resolving this problem, the company prepared for an attempt at the end of June. However, thanks to strong winds near the spatial harbor, this did not happen, which Gilmour Space runs north of the city of Bowen. The target date then slipped to the right due to an unfavorable weather until Eris was finally on the ground.
Related stories:
– Australian company Gilmour Space receives the 1st Orbital start license of the country
– Start of the first local orbital rocket of Australia for an indefinite period due to the problem of payload cladding
– The history of the rockets
In 2015, Adam Gilmour and his brother James founded Gilmour Space with the aim of making Australia an important player in space airfield. A large part of this vision focuses on Eris, an 82-foot rocket, which starts up to £ 474 (215 kilograms) payload on sun synchronous orbit.
The company, whose workforce has grown to around 200 people, also builds satellites. In fact, his elarasat-pace bus bus was only launched on SpaceX’s transporter-14-with-driving mission for the first time last month. With this debut mission, Elarasat has an instrument for CSIRO, Australia’s National Science Agency: A hyper -spectral image that contributes to keeping the water quality in the eye.
Today’s start was the first orbital test of all kinds from Australian soil for more than 50 years. The latest such flight took place in October 1971 when a British black arrow missile successfully defeated the Prospero satellite of the United Kingdom from the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia.
Note from the publisher: This story was updated on July 30th at 1:20 a.m. ET with new pictures and quotations and information from the E -Mail declaration by Gilmour Space.
