FAQ
Australia’s First Commercial Space Launch: Fast Facts
- Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA) launched Australia’s first ever commercial space launch for NASA from its Arnhem Space Centre (ASC) in June 2022.
- The ASC is owned and operated by ELA and is the only commercially owned and run multi-user equatorial launch site in the world.
- Over the next 18 months to 2 years, the ASC will ramp up to be capable of launching more than 50 launches a year
Where is the ASC
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Is ELA Australian owned
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Is it difficult to get to ASC
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Can the public view the launches
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When is the next launch
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What is the environmental impact from the rockets
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Is there ELA merchandise?
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How can I get involved?
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When was ELA founded?
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The First Launch: NASA
- The first of three NASA launches in this campaign took place in the late evening of 26th June 2022, and the rocket was visible to the local community immediately after lift-off.
- For safety reasons, no public viewing of the remaining rockets launching from the ASC for close proximity will be possible.
- The three NASA Black Brant IX rocket launches/missions are for scientific experimental purposes for the Universities of Colorado and Wisconsin.
- The first mission was the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter or XQC, from the University of Wisconsin. The night sky glows with X-ray light coming from all directions. Much of this X-ray light is produced by the interstellar medium, which includes hot gases filling the space between the stars. The unique X-ray detectors on this mission, cooled to a frigid one-twentieth of a degree above absolute zero, measured the arriving X-rays with unprecedented precision to better understand the interstellar medium and its influence on the structure and evolution of galaxies and stars.
- About 60 NASA personnel have travelled from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility to support the campaign. An additional 15 science team members arrived at the Arnhem Space Centre in June.
- This campaign will be the first NASA rocket launches from Australia since 1995, when launches were conducted from the Royal Australian Air Force Woomera Range Complex.
- The second mission is for Suborbital Imaging Spectrograph for Transition region Irradiance from Nearby Exoplanet host stars, or SISTINE, from the University of Colorado Boulder. Targeted for launch on July 4, SISTINE will study how ultraviolet light from stars affects the atmospheres of the planets around them, including the gases thought to be signs of life.
- The third mission, targeted to launch on July 12, is the Dual-channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment, or DEUCE, also from the University of Colorado Boulder. DEUCE will measure a so-far unstudied part of their extreme ultraviolet light spectrum. These measurements are needed to model stars similar to and smaller than our Sun, as well as understand their effects on planetary atmospheres.