Category Archive: News

Hello everyone, Drew Kerman here, Operations Director for the KSA. I’d like to take some time to explain why despite the fact that we’ve been going to space now for over three months we haven’t taken any photos from above the atmosphere and won’t be doing so for another few months at least. Although it’s true space photos would not be a huge science return and mainly be of benefit only to our PR department (do we have a PR department? I should know that) that’s not the reason. Simple fact is that our current fleet of sub-orbital rockets, the Progeny family, are not a good platform for taking photos for numerous reasons.

The main reason is that because they are unguided ballistic rockets in order to help maintain stability during powered ascent their fins are slightly angled to spin the rocket up. This is a very easy way to keep a rocket flying straight and stable but because we are using the fins to induce spin rather than, say, small external thrusters, the spin rate increases throughout the entire flight while the rocket is under thrust. By the time the third stage has expended its fuel the rocket is generally spinning at a rate of ~150RPM or nearly three times per second. To get an idea of what that would look like, here is a video taken during a Progeny Mk2.1 launch where the payload was only spinning at roughly 120RPM. Any photos taken at such speeds would be extremely motion-blurred, especially given the longer exposures we would want for photos from space.

A solution to this problem comes from a technique known as a yo-yo despin, which you can see an example of in this video simulation. Progenitor engineers have already modeled a similar setup and determined it’s possible to get this to work for the Progeny rocket by removing the batteries on the upper payload truss to install two winch units that would deploy the counter-weights once the payload is in space, slowing down the spin rate so that a single camera mounted on the lower truss (the other payload position would be a battery) could get shots of various views as the rocket rotated more slowly. However to deploy the counter-weights means detaching the upper payload fairings, and that could bring about a new set of problems.

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The end of last week saw what we like to call the “final flight” of the Progeny Mk5. Although the Mk5 will continue to serve our sub-orbital needs the rocket has been redesigned into two new Block I and Block II variants that will be the only type of Mk5 flown going forward. This Mk5 was built from spare parts originally meant to replace any broken/damaged parts for the Mk5’s initial 5-launch campaign, which didn’t need them, and the boosters are less powerful than the newer Block variants. We’re happy to say the launch was a complete success and a great end to the initial run of Mk5 rockets, which only suffered one failure.

We made some changes to the flight profile of this launch, which was the first Mk5 to leave the pad at an 85° pitch angle rather than 87°. Instead of waiting for the nose to drop 1.5° of pitch before igniting the next booster, we only waited for 1° and when the 3rd stage liquid booster engine fired the Automated Flight Control System took control of the throttle to maintain a TWR of 2 until it detected dynamic pressure begin to fall, at which point it throttled up to full while ensuring pressure continued to drop. These changes were made to see how a faster vertical ascent would affect the flight when launched from a lower initial pitch.

Upon launch the nose raised about 1.1°, which is similar to the performance of the Progeny Mk4. The shorter coast periods had no ill-effect on the rocket due to the higher pressures encountered when given less time to slow down. The auto-throttle of the third stage booster worked great and the rocket coasted to an apokee of 107km while gathering data from both its scientific instruments. It fell back through the atmosphere with a 25s comm blackout due to re-entry heat and splashed down in the Kerblantic 67km downrange after a total flight time of 8m37s. You can view complete telemetry for the mission here.

View detailed telemetry analysis »