Despite glitches, officials upbeat about first launch

Though there were some problems, officials were upbeat about Monday’s launch from Spaceport America.

“We inaugurated a spaceport today,” said UP Aerospace CFO Bill Heiden at a post-launch briefing Monday night in Las Cruces. “This was not a perfect flight, but it was an overwhelmingly successful launch.”

The day began with a failed transponder – a piece of equipment that helps officials find the rocket after it lands. Fixing that problem delayed the launch more than six hours. The launch itself went perfectly, but the rocket corkscrewed and then veered off course shortly after launch, and failed to reach space.

Officials are still trying to determine why that happened and whether there is a problem that will delay future launches.

The rocket, originally scheduled to launch at 7:30 a.m. from the spaceport, located northeast of Las Cruces, actually took off at 2:14 p.m. to a cheering crowd of about 200 who watched from a location three miles north of the launch site. Mission control pronounced the launch a complete success before discovering what those who stood several miles away could already see – there was a problem.

The rocket started out on a straight course, then wobbled a bit and finally corkscrewed before vanishing.

Because the mission control building is so close to the launch site, officials were looking almost straight up at the rocket and did not have the same view.

“We actually were under the impression there for a few moments that the mission had been successful and the rocket was going into space,” New Mexico Economic Development Department Secretary Rick Homans said Monday night.

Officials said earlier Monday that the rocket appeared to reach an altitude of 40,000 feet – some 300,000 feet short of space – before coming back down. Monday night, Heiden said the peak altitude and many other facts are yet to be known.

“At some point after (launch) the vehicle experienced some kind of flight anomaly,” he said.

White Sands Missile Range has located the rocket, which is not on the missile range, Heiden said, though he was vague about the location of the rocket. Officials will attempt to reach the rocket this morning, though they will have to travel through rugged terrain and may have to hike to the site, he said.

The rocket is equipped with two flight recorders that will provide data about the flight. Officials don’t know whether parachutes deployed before the rocket landed.

“We’ll know what happened on that flight,” Heiden said. “We’re going to reconstruct it.”

Heiden also said it’s too soon to say what the flight does to the company’s launch schedule. It plans several more launches this year, the next on Oct. 21.

The problem could be minor and easily fixed or could take more time, he said.

“We are not making any changes yet,” he said. “We may or may not adjust our launch schedule.”

Officials said they are confident that payloads on the rocket are undamaged. If clients want them flown again in an attempt to reach space, they will be sent up on a future flight.

Officials with UP Aerospace said they proved Monday that their business plan works and that they can work with state officials on launches. Other officials spoke about how well everyone worked together Monday despite adversity, and said of four components of a launch – hardware, software, infrastructure and the people involved – three worked perfectly. The hardware, or rocket, had some problems, but officials stressed that the initial launch phase went flawlessly. Almost half of all initial launches fail.

“The mission might not have attained all the goals, but we did have a successful launch,” Homans said.