Last week, Spaceport America announced that one of its four tenants partnered with Los Alamos National Laboratory in August to perform a test flight, which is expected to be followed by many more.
Aboard the UP Aerospace rocket, which launched Aug. 11, was a research payload developed by the lab that relayed flight data such as acceleration and rotation to a Department of Defense satellite already in orbit. Test flights would typically take place over the Pacific Ocean at a potential price tag of millions of dollars. But by partnering with private companies such as UP Aerospace, the lab can reduce costs and increase the frequency of test flights.
The recent UP Aerospace flight at the Spaceport cost $1 million and occurred 15 months after the initial concept.
“The [test flight] — designed and executed flawlessly in record time — is just the first example of a unique collaboration between the Laboratory, UP Aerospace, and Spaceport America that will enable us to train a whole new generation of scientists and engineers by giving them rapid and frequent access to experimental flight test data,” said LANL deputy director of weapons Bob Webster in a statement.
UP Aerospace, based in the Denver area, has launched 14 rockets from the Spaceport since 2006. One of UP's vehicles, the SpaceLoft, is capable of achieving five minutes of micro-gravity conditions for smaller payloads. In addition, UP Aerospace is now developing another rocket, called the Spyder, that the company says can reach 400 kilometers into the air and fly faster than Mach 7 — or 5,370 miles per hour.
The rocket company was incorporated in 2004 and has overseen launches for NASA and other governmental agencies, according to the Spaceport. Throughout the next five years, LANL plans to conduct 10 similar tests, per the Spaceport.
"This mission demonstrated that a small company like UP Aerospace is capable of meeting complex stringent requirements in a very short period of time, at low cost, enabling new technologies to be developed in a very rapid cadence," UP Aerospace President Jerry Larson said in a statement.
