Five Flights complete
Movac Fund 5 portfolio company Dawn Aerospace has conducted five flights of the company’s Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane. The campaign was run from Glentanner Aerodrome in New Zealand’s South Island. Taxi testing commenced in early July and five flights occurred between the 28th and 30th of July, reaching altitudes of 3,400 feet. The flights were to assess the airframe and avionics of the vehicle and were conducted using surrogate jet engines.
Dawn is creating reusable and sustainable space technologies – suborbital and orbital rocket-powered planes – that operate much like a fleet of aircraft, taking off and landing horizontally at airports.
“Dawn is focussed on sustainable and scalable access to space and our Mk-II vehicle is entirely reusable,” said Stefan Powell, CEO. “The team have successfully captured extensive data enabling further R&D on the capability of Mk-II. I’m hugely proud of our engineering team for designing and building a vehicle that flies beautifully first time and just as predicted. We are delighted with the results and demonstrating rapid turnaround – we conducted five flights within three days, and two flights occurred within ninety minutes of each other.”
Well done to the Dawn Aerospace team – Movac is delighted to be part of their journey to space!
