Tropical Cyclone Alfred has combined with an ongoing regulatory blizzard to blow away Gilmour Space Technologies’ launch window for the maiden flight of its Eris rocket, which was to have opened later this week on March 15.
The company has not set a new date, but the delay could be as long as two weeks or more.
While the company’s Bowen Orbital Spaceport has enjoyed pretty good weather through the past week or more, Alfred’s impact was felt acutely by Gilmour’s Brisbane and Gold Coast-based staff, who were sent home in the days prior to the storm to be with families and to look after properties and pets.
“[Alfred] was really kind of a secondary effect. We had a lot of people who had come up from the Gold Coast getting the rocket ready,” Gilmour chief executive officer Adam Gilmour said in the days before Alfred’s landfall.
“We flew them back last week, because some have kids or partners that they don’t want going through that alone… We flew them back so they could just stop and get some preparatory work done [for the cyclone],” he said.
With Alfred’s passing, the company will now reassess and give the staff most impacted time to find their feet. And then it will announce the date for opening its new launch window.
“We’re finalising things to determine what date is possible for the team,” Gilmour Space director and head of communications Michelle Gilmour told InnovationAus.com.
“But we’re not sure. We’ll need to see what the impact has been on our staff, and their homes here.
“And we will provide a date as soon as we can,” she said, adding that there was also regulatory paperwork still making its way back and forth between the company and the Australian Space Agency.
Gilmour Space had been granted its launch permit last November, the first ever issued by the space agency for a sovereign launch vehicle.
But the permit is conditional on final documentation for the launch being filed and agreed with the agency. That process is stretching longer than anticipated, but is progressing, with an on-going and detailed back and forth between the company and the space agency.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.