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The spaceship hovered for less than a minute before crashing in a giant plume of smoke, but it was history-making nonetheless \u2013 the attempted launch of an orbital rocket designed and made in Australia.<\/p>\n
The Eris rocket was built by Gold Coast-based Gilmour Space and briefly blasted off from the Bowen orbital spaceport in north Queensland on Wednesday morning, after months of waiting for the right conditions.<\/p>\n
The orbit attempt was watched on from the surrounding hills by enthusiasts and streamed live by the likes of YouTuber Josh Keegan, also known as Aussienaut.<\/p>\n
Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/p>\n
\u201cOK we\u2019re going, we\u2019re going, it\u2019s going!\u201d Keegan said with breathless excitement after a second day of patient watching \u2013 but the celebrations did not last long.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gone, it\u2019s gone,\u201d Keegan said seconds later. \u201cOh no, it didn\u2019t go, there wasn\u2019t sufficient thrust to actually keep it up.<\/p>\n
<\/span>The 23-metre-long, 30-tonne Eris rocket was launched from the Bowen orbital spaceport after months of waiting for the right conditions.<\/span> Photograph: Gilmour Space Technologies<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that\u2019s the end of the Eris rocket. We have a cloud, and that\u2019s the end.\u201d<\/p>\n But while the billow of smoke may have marked the end of Eris, Gilmour and the nascent Australian space industry hope this failed orbit attempt will prove just a beginning.<\/p>\n Gilmour Space issued a statement shortly afterwards saying Eris\u2019s 14 seconds of flight brought Australia closer to the club of six nations who regularly launch spacecraft to orbit.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a maiden test flight, especially after an extended 18-month wait on the pad for final approvals, this is a strong result and a major step forward for Australia\u2019s sovereign space capability,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n \u201cMost importantly, the team is safe and energised for Test Flight 2.\u201d<\/p>\n The company\u2019s CEO, Adam Gilmour, posted on social media that he was happy with the launch attempt.<\/p>\n \u201cGot off the Pad, I am happy,\u201d he wrote. \u201cOf course I would have liked more flight time but happy with this.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The 23-metre-long, 30-tonne rocket was covered in sensors from which the Queensland company will hope to glean information to assist future launch attempts.<\/p>\n One Giant Leap Australia Foundation, which develops education programs geared toward growing a future workforce in the space industry, was among those to congratulate Gilmour Space for a \u201csterling effort\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only way to learn is to fail forward,\u201d it posted on social media. \u201cWe know more today than we did yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n Gilmour Space was poised to launch on Tuesday but winds were too strong. It had also sought to launch in May but did not.<\/p>\n The company received $5m from the Australian government for its Eris launch vehicle last week to develop its next-generation liquid rocket engine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The spaceship hovered for less than a minute before crashing in a giant plume of smoke, but it was history-making nonetheless \u2013 the attempted launch of an orbital rocket designed and made in Australia. The Eris rocket was built by Gold Coast-based Gilmour Space and briefly blasted off from the Bowen orbital spaceport in north<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[6708,3646,6710,6709,367,6745,1101,6746],"class_list":{"0":"post-13048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-australianmade","9":"tag-cloud","10":"tag-crashes","11":"tag-orbital","12":"tag-rocket","13":"tag-shortly","14":"tag-space","15":"tag-takeoff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}