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The first fully Australian-made rocket, Eris-1, attempted to become the country’s first orbital flight in almost 54 years on Tuesday. Unfortunately, it crashed just 14 seconds after taking off.
Eris-1, developed and manufactured by private Australian company Gilmour Space Technologies, was supposed to take off from Bowen Orbital Spaceport in coastal Queensland. And for a little over 30 seconds it looked like everything was going as planned. The rocket ignited on the launchpad for 23 seconds. Then it took off. Then it crashed. Of course, Gilmour claimed that despite the failure, it was actually a success.
“Getting off the pad and into flight is a huge step forward for any new rocket program. This was the first real test of our rocket systems, our propulsion technology, and our spaceport — and it proved that much of what we’ve built works,” Adam Gilmour, CEO of Gilmour Space, said in a statement. “Clearing the tower was a major milestone for our team. It showed that Australia can design, build, and launch rockets right here at home.”
Technically, he’s not wrong. They did design, build, and launch a rocket. It just didn’t go very far.
“Today, Eris became the first #AustralianMade orbital rocket to launch from Australian soil — ~14s of flight, 23s engine burn. Big step for launch capability. Team safe, data in hand, eyes on TestFlight 2,” Gilmour Space Technologies wrote on X (Twitter) after the launch.
The company also claimed that despite the mess they made there were no injuries and no “adverse environmental impacts.” Adam Gilmour did, however, admit on LinkedIn that he “would have liked more flight time,” but he was still “happy.”
Of course, it could have gone much worse. In 2023, Russia’s first moon mission in almost 50 years was going very well and was on track to become the first lunar station to ever land on the south pole of the moon. It actually made it all the way to moon before it crashed and burned, or as Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos put it, its Luna-25 craft “ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon.”
Just a couple of weeks later, India successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, making it the first lunar station to ever accomplish such a feat.
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