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The Aurora certified as an aircraft so it can use a conventional runway.
Dawn Aerospace has flown its Mk. 2 Aurora rocket-powered suborbital demonstrator aircraft twice within 8 hr.
The vehicle took off from Glentanner Aerodrome on the South Island of New Zealand. On both flights the aircraft reached speeds of Mach 0.9 and an altitude of 63,000 ft., the company said Oct. 4. Dawn Aerospace has designed the Mk. 2 to reach 100 km (328,084 ft.) in altitude twice in one day.
“Rapid reusability has been termed the holy grail for rocket-powered systems,” says Stefan Powell, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “This milestone shows that our fundamental concept will unlock never-before-seen performance and hypersonic flight in a platform suitable for everyday operations, not just one-off research and development.”
Dawn Aerospace says it has had the Aurora certified as an aircraft so that it could use a conventional runway and operate without the need for exclusive airspace.
“Being certified as an aircraft is essential to rapid reusability,” Powell says. “Our license permits us to fly as often as the vehicle allows. At present, we can fly every 4 hr. with scope to reduce turnaround time further.”
The Mk. 2 is intended to prove critical technologies for Dawn Aerospace’s Mk. 3, a larger, two-stage-to-orbit, rocket-powered spaceplane. The Mk. 3 is to be 22 m long, compared to the 4.8-m length of its predecessor, and is designed to carry 250 kg to low Earth orbit.
The startup plans for the Mk. 2 technology demonstrator to work as a commercial vehicle as well, flying a parabolic arc enabling up to 180 sec. of microgravity. The vehicle can carry a 3U payload of 5 kg, perhaps for carrying aeronomy, Earth observation, education, in-space science, space weather or technology development payloads, the company has said.
“Dawn has already signed up several U.S. customers to fly payloads on Aurora as early as Q4 2024,” it says, without disclosing who the customers are.
The company is touting New Zealand as “poised to become a center of advanced aviation and hypersonic flight tests.” Dawn Aerospace says the South Pacific Ocean with its thousands of kilometers of open airspace and sea represents “a regulatory regime uniquely well suited to flight test of advanced aircraft.”
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