Tag Archive: Progeny Mk7-A

Although the original goals of the Progenitor program ended at reaching space, the decision was made to attempt to create an alternative means of reaching orbit for smaller payloads that could be cheaper than a larger Ascension rocket and faster than having to wait for multiple small satellites to travel up together in order to justify the launch. The Mk7 series of rockets will aim to achieve this goal through incremental design just as the previous Progeny rockets worked their way up into space. Along the way they will test new technologies to apply to Ascension rockets. The first flight of the first design iteration, the Mk7-A, set out to see how well the rocket could handle a maximum thrust ascent while testing new guidance fins and a vectoring engine.

The Flight

After some modifications were needed to the launch pad support arms and the rocket’s umbilical connection ports, the rocket was rolled out for a second time and hooked up one day in advance of the original launch time on Thursday, June 20th. However news from the downrange tracking station in Ockr caused us to scrub the launch when the relay antenna setup for allowing the rocket to stay in contact with KSC through chute deployment failed to test well. The relay was fixed over the weekend and the launch went off as rescheduled for June 24th.

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Under development for over a year (the Progeny Mk6 debuted in Feb 2018), the latest iteration in the Progeny line of rockets will aim to satisfy new goals for the program – being able to deploy 0.35-0.625m payloads to Low-Kerbin Orbit (70-250km). The Mk7 series will also test out several new technologies that will work their way up to our bigger rockets such as vectoring engines, reaction wheel stability control systems, fully-actuating guidance fins, payload fairings, inline & more compact/lighter batteries. While we had hoped the Mk7-A could reach orbit, its primary design purpose will be to test the new form factor of a 0.625m payload atop a 0.35m stack in the final stage.

Another design consideration for all the Mk7 rockets is to be compatible with the pad infrastructure put in place for Ascension rockets, including the engine collar and resource towers. This will save time and money as we will no longer need to switch out the engine collar for a dedicated launch base. An insert for the engine collar will cradle the lower-stage booster while three stabilizers will help hold the rocket steady once the upper umbilical tower swings away from the liquid fuel tank and will retract moments before booster ignition. The lower umbilical tower will not be used.

The ‘-A’ designation of the rocket signifies that there will be several iterations yet to come but all will be working to achieve the same goal stated earlier. The Progenitor team already recognizes that they will be needing a more powerful second stage solid and the lower solid may need to have a new core designed as it was meant for lighter payloads carried up on sub-orbital trajectories with earlier Mk5 & Mk6 rockets.

First launch of the Mk7-A could happen as early as June.