Space technology company SpinLaunch on Monday announced that it successfully completed the tenth flight test of its Suborbital Accelerator.
The test, which took place last Tuesday and was witnessed by over 150 officials, people from SpinLaunch's partner companies—including Airbus US Space & Defense, Cornell Engineering and Outpost—and others in the industry, provided important flight data and showed that standard satellite parts supplied by the company's partners will work with the launch environment.
In the test, the Suborbital Accelerator Flight Test Vehicle transported four payloads from the partner companies and two instrumentation payloads, providing significant information about the integration of the payloads and the launch environment.
Payloads were accelerated up to 10,000G in Spinlaunch's Lab Accelerator, located at the company's headquarters in Long Beach, then inspected and integrated into the Flight Test Vehicle.
SpinLaunch signs payload deal with NASA
Spinlaunch signed an agreement with NASA earlier this year to develop and launch a payload and supply the agency with flight data in order to determine the feasibility of future collaborations with the company.
In order to better understand the launch environment and SpinLaunch's payload integration and testing procedures, NASA used a Data Acquisition Unit (DAQ) equipped with two accelerometers, a magnetometer, a gyroscope and temperature, pressure and humidity sensors to record specific aspects of the SpinLaunch kinetic launch system, according to Business Wire.
“Flight Test 10 represents a key inflection point for SpinLaunch, as we’ve opened the Suborbital Accelerator system externally for our customers, strategic partners, and research groups.”
Jonathan Yaney, founder and CEO, SpinLaunch
“Flight Test 10 represents a key inflection point for SpinLaunch, as we’ve opened the Suborbital Accelerator system externally for our customers, strategic partners, and research groups,” SpinLaunch founder and CEO Jonathan Yaney said, according to the report. “The data and insights collected from flight tests will be invaluable for both SpinLaunch, as we further the development of the Orbital Launch system, and for our customers who are looking to us to provide them with low-cost, high-cadence, sustainable access to space.”