On Sunday, the company’s founder, Adam Gilmour, said the weather until Saturday looks promising and added his engineers are “reasonably confident” it will get off the pad.
“It’s going to be a wild ride for the next three or four days,” he told the Australian Financial Review.
Gilmour announced last week it would open its launch window on 15 May, following multiple delays blamed on Tropical Cyclone Alfred that shut down large parts of Queensland.
Eris is a three-stage orbital vehicle and the first to be almost entirely Australian-designed and manufactured. The launch would mark one of the most significant moments in the local sector’s history, and the first attempt at an orbital blast off in 50 years from Australian soil.
Gilmour has repeatedly said that the initial blast-off of Eris is likely to end in failure, and on Sunday admitted a flight time of 20 or 30 seconds would be “fantastic”.
A flight time of 30 seconds would see it crash down within its Bowen launch site, while 1 minute or longer would see it fall into the ocean, which has been designated as part of an exclusion zone.
Today, the company will begin preparation by rostering staff 24 hours a day and beginning pre-launch checks before Eris is moved into a vertical position on the launch pad on Tuesday afternoon.
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Gilmour has been developing Eris for over eight years and believes it could address a gap in the global market for small satellite launches.
It had planned for an inaugural blast-off in April 2024 but faced a lengthy delay in obtaining its final permit from the Australian Space Agency.
The news of a blast-off date comes after the federal government relaxed the laws around launches in February to better consider the high likelihood of failure.
The changes to the Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018 include an amendment that means that if no property is destroyed, a longer investigation can now be avoided in the event of an explosion.
“This is the second round of reforms over the past 18 months to the act, which will support our fast-moving and highly commercialised space sector,” said Enrico Palermo, the head of the Australian Space Agency.
“These changes will remove inefficiency and improve flexibility without compromising safety.”
Australia is currently home to four spaceports: Equatorial Launch Australia’s Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory, Gilmour Space Technologies’ Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland, Southern Launch’s orbital Whalers Way facility, and suborbital Koonibba Test Range in South Australia.
A fifth, by Space Centre Australia, is planned for Far North Queensland, while ELA also hopes to move its spaceport to a similar location.
Adam Thorn
Adam is a journalist who has worked for more than 40 prestigious media brands in the UK and Australia. Since 2005, his varied career has included stints as a reporter, copy editor, feature writer and editor for publications as diverse as Fleet Street newspaper The Sunday Times, fashion bible Jones, media and marketing website Mumbrella as well as lifestyle magazines such as GQ, Woman’s Weekly, Men’s Health and Loaded. He joined Momentum Media in early 2020 and currently writes for Australian Aviation and World of Aviation.
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