Queensland’s Gilmour Space Technology has bested its Australian record for a rocket test fire with a 110-second mission duration burn.

Following on from the longest Australian rocket test fire a few weeks back, Gilmour has beat that figure and then some with a 110-second test of its hybrid rocket engine.

CEO Adam Gilmour said the milestone was significant for the company’s plans to launch small satellites in 2022 with a hybrid propulsion three-stage rocket.

“What you see here is a mission duty cycle and throttle test of our smallest upper-stage engine. We more than doubled the duration of our last 45-second test fire, and in the process proved a lot of the technologies we will need for our larger engines,” he said.

“We also conducted a controlled throttle-down during the test to demonstrate our engine’s on-orbit manoeuvring capability to a customer.”

Mr. Gilmour said such capability would be critical to any future applications requiring surface landings, such as to the Moon or Mars.

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