Progenitor team members have spent the last few days reviewing telemetry data from the third launch of the Mk5 Block I in order to determine the overall performance of the rocket and what happened to cause two anomalies that occurred during the ascent into space. Both have been tracked down to their root cause and we will cover them after review of the flight.
The Flight
No issues preceded the launch, with perfect weather deciding to show up for launch day although we had plans in place to push into the weekend if necessary to get the rocket launched before the end of the operational year. The lower 0.625m solid rocket booser lit off at 12:30:00.03 local time to push the rocket away from the launch base at 4Gs with 146.142kN of thrust to establish the rocket in its initial climb and not allow lift at the nose to flip it vertical or over backwards. Launching from 85° It stood up to 86.8° before beginning to pitch back over towards the east and away from KSC. After 5 seconds the new lower stage began to reduce its base-level thrust output although given the rocket was climbing into decreasing air pressure the overall thrust continued to increase. 10 seconds after lift off it had reached Mach 1 and 8 seconds later dynamic pressure began to fall as it passed through a Max Q of 78.373kPa, within our planned range of 60-80kPa. It burned out after 33.71s with a thrust of 172.596kN, pushing the rocket to a velocity of 653.520m/s at an altitude of 14.009km.
