Kiwi Orbitals plan for 2019 launch
A Hamilton-based company has received recognition for designing a suborbital space rocket.
Kiwi Orbitals was one of five regional finalists in the New Zealand Space Challenge, held in Christchurch as part of TechWeek’18.
Cameron Brown co-founded Kiwi Orbitals in October 2017, combining his passions for astronomy, technology and computer science with an emerging interest in rockets.
The company didn’t win the challenge, which asked for a rocket which could help with Antarctic exploration.
However, Brown said the eight-metre tall Duncan Rocket had been designed before Kiwi Orbitals entered the Space Challenge.
The goal was still to launch the rocket in 2019, planned at this stage to be conducted from the New Zealand mainland.
‘‘It was a pretty competitive challenge,’’ Brown said.
‘‘There would have been a lot of people who were a pretty close second place as well. Everyone presented really well.’’
He said while the Duncan Rocket was quite an ambitious design, the winners at GPS Control Systems were closer to the end of the development pipeline.
When built, Kiwi Orbitals’ vessel will serve as a sounding rocket, which are also known as research rockets, carrying instruments into space to take measurements and perform scientific experiments in negative gravity.
It is designed to blast its engine for one minute, taking it and its 4kg payload to an altitude of 40km.
‘‘Instead of escaping Earth’s gravity and being in an orbit around the Earth, this one’s going to follow a parabolic arc, so it’s going to go up and down in quite a short time and cover just a small amount of ground,’’ Brown said.
Kiwi Orbitals plans that from such an altitude, even in a limited span of time, the plan is that it would be able to map the landscape optimally.
The rocket would be fully recoverable for reuse after its five minute flight, as it would descend back to Earth using a parachute.
‘‘We’ll definitely be going ahead with this,’’ Brown said.
Aerospace entrepreneur Mark Rocket was on the judging panel at the Space Challenge.
Rocket Lab, the New Zealand Space Agency and NASA were also in the audience, so Brown is optimistic Kiwi Orbitals will be able to find collaborators for the Duncan Rocket venture.