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A private rocket launched by UP
Aerospace heads skyward Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, in Upham, N.M. The
unmanned rocket that took off in the inaugural launch from New Mexico's
spaceport crashed in the desert, failing in its mission to reach
suborbital space. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
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LOS ANGELES, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- A low-cost carrier rocket designed by a private U.S. space firm to carry out a series of space experiments crashed in the New Mexico desert on Monday just minutes after launching from a commercial pad.
The 6-meter Spaceloft XL rocket, designed by the UP Aerospace, took
off at 2:14 p.m. local time (2014 GMT). It was loaded with 50 experiments and
other small payloads and was the company's debut launch.
The single-stage, solid-fuel rocket was expected to accelerate to
five times the speed of sound, nearly 5,000 km per hour, after its liftoff, and
distribute its payloads 110 km above the Earth.
But the rocket reached an altitude of only 11 km and then dropped
back to Earth prematurely, said Jerry Larson, president of UP Aerospace, based
in Connecticut.
Mission controllers of the company said engineers had not established
the cause of the launch failure, so far only describing it as "an unexpected
aerodynamic effect."
The company said it planned several other launches later this year.
Monday's failure marked the second failed private launch debut this year. On March 24, the privately-developed Falcon 1 rocket, built by California-based Space Exploration Technologies, failed just after liftoff. A fuel leak caused by a broken nut was cited as the reason. Enditem
