UPHAM, N.M.-
Officials at the company that funded the failed launch of the 20-foot SpaceLoft XL rocket said Tuesday that they had located the rocket in remote terrain, but that recovering it could be time-consuming.
The 20-foot rocket, among the first to be launched from any commercial U.S. spaceport, reached about 40,000 feet before falling back to Earth on Monday afternoon.
Bill Heiden, Connecticut-based UP Aerospace’s chief financial officer, said that UP crews could not get within 6 miles of the rocket by vehicle, and will have to walk into the area and figure out how to get the rocket out.
“I would be surprised if we get word today” that the rocket was recovered, he said. Heiden said the effort will continue until the experiment payload it was carrying is removed from the desert.
Heiden said the company will start removing the payload once it is found and return it to the customers.
UP Aerospace officials said Monday they would make every effort to put the payload on the next flight if the backers of the experiments are interested.
Officials said that until they examine the rocket and review its two flight recorders, they could not say why the SpaceLoft XL missed its mark.
The rocket took off at 2:14 p.m. and was due back about 13 minutes later at White Sands Missile Range, just north of the launch site. It was carrying various experiments and other payloads.
Witnesses initially cheered as they saw the rocket hurdle toward space, before it appeared to wobble as it vanished into the sky. The craft appeared to go into a corkscrew motion that was not part of the plan.
“It should not have wobbled,” said launch logistical coordinator Tracey Larson said.
While the rocket failed to reach its final destination, Heiden said the company still considers Monday’s event successful.
“We gave young people … a real look at what is involved,” he said. “We’re thrilled with what we accomplished today.”
Larson said the company would try again with another launch on Oct. 21 from the same site, and said that the act of getting the rocket airborne was a sort of victory.
“We will launch again in three weeks. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. We still feel it was a success,” she said.
Among the experiments on board was one from Farnsworth Aerospace Magnet School in St. Paul, Minnesota, which sent two students to watch the launch. Their experiment included two digital and two analog watches to analyze how the pressure of space launch affects timepieces.
Several other UP Aerospace flights are set later this year, including the Oct. 21 flight expected to carry the ashes of James Doohan, who gained fame as chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original “Star Trek” TV series, and Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper.
The Upham site also is the planned home of a state-built $225 million (euro177.2 million) spaceport. UP Aerospace’s rocket was launching from a temporary pad.
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, announced plans last year to base his space tourism company, Virgin Galactic, in New Mexico and to launch manned flights from the spaceport by the end of the decade.
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