- Photo credit: Bob Martin KRQE Television
SPACEPORT AMERICA, New Mexico -A suite of student-built experiments received “high marks” thanks to a boost into space earlier this week to celebrate a New Mexico Second Annual Education Launch.
An UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL rocket screamed skyward May 4, powering high school, college and university investigations from across the state on a suborbital space trek.
The New Mexico Space Grant Consortium at New Mexico State University in neighboring Las Cruces sponsored the launch – an initiative to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs for New Mexico students.
The powerful rocket took a speedy skyward trajectory from Spaceport America – a remote site outside Upham, New Mexico that is being developed as the first purpose-built commercial space facility.
The rocket shot to a top speed of Mach 5.5 – five and a half times the speed of sound.
Lockheed Martin provided a pre-launch mission assurance review of the booster, appraising the readiness for flight of the entire rocket – from avionics to parachute deployments.
“The mission was a total success from liftoff to touchdown,” said Jerry Larson, President of UP Aerospace.
Larson said the rocket reached an altitude of 70.8 miles and landed only two miles from a pre-set target 35 miles away on White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). At the range, technicians there tracked the transponder on the payloads section with two radars and skin tracked the booster to impact.
“The new payload parachute system we dropped tested a few weeks ago performed extremely well touching down with a very soft 10 miles per hour,” Larson told this Coalition reporter.
“Our customers payloads all worked well and we were able to fly the payloads section back to Spaceport America with an Army helicopter a few hours later, giving them back to our customers onsite,” Larson added.
According to Pat Hynes, Director of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, the rocket launch helps usher in a new era of access to space for student experiments.
“Today’s launch is confirmation to New Mexico’s students and the rest of the world that we are capable of delivering the goods when it comes to scientific development, aerospace research and intellectual capital,” Hynes said in a press statement.
By Leonard David