It’s understood that the rocket lifted off at 10:41am AEDT, reached a top speed of Mach 1.54 and completed a flight of almost nine minutes from lift-off to touchdown.
Sunburnt Space has previously been looking at the launch mission in October, building on a successful first commercial flight in July this year.
The Mini Meggs, a six-inch, two-stage sub-orbital rocket, powered by ethanol and nitrous oxide bipropellant engine, was originally launched during an extended launch window on 6 July at White Cliffs in NSW.
“Mini Meggs Flight 3: done. Last week we sent Mini Meggs up again, a mere four weeks after our last launch. Making it our third flight in 12 weeks,” said a public statement from the company.
“Let’s get the honest bit out of the way. We didn’t go as high as we wanted. Not ideal! But by the end of the day the team had a solid idea of what went wrong and a plan to fix it.
“Now for the good stuff. And there’s a lot of it; launch prep is way faster. Last flight, getting ready took a full day. This time? About 90 minutes. Same team, smarter set-up.
“New gear, new processes, all working. Everything we changed since the last flight did its job first time. We went from launch pad to hitting the big red button in under 20 minutes. Last time it took almost an hour.
“Recovery was a proper adventure, but our upgraded trackers found the rocket and helped us figure out the best way in to bring it home.
“This is what we’re building at Sunburnt Space Co. Rockets with the ability to prep fast, fly often and learn quickly. Every one of these flights makes us better, and our customers too. That’s how space access goes from a rarity to a commodity.
“Huge thanks to our incredible team for the long days and big effort. And a massive shout-out to Endeavour Aerospace for the launch site and support. Thank you as well to our payload customers onboard this flight; Orbit2Orbit and Robinson Aerospace for riding along with us! Having you on board means the world to us.”
The company’s historic commercial launch in July of the first Australian-designed and Australian-built liquid-fuelled rocket reached 17,000 feet against a 20-kilometre target, with payloads deployed cleanly, descending under parachute and recovered the same evening.
At reduced altitude, onboard avionics recorded almost seven seconds of high-quality microgravity, below 30 milli-g, with a peak acceleration of just 2.6 g.
