Gilmour Space to launch hypersonic flight test service in 2025
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The news: Australian startup Gilmour Space Technologies will launch a new suborbital flight test service in 2025 to support commercial and defence customers developing technologies in hypersonic speeds of more than five times the speed of sound.
The numbers: Gold Coast-based Gilmour said that while wind tunnel tests — which offer hypersonic flow for 200 milliseconds to 300 milliseconds — can support early-stage testing of materials and geometries with scaled-down models, a significant challenge remains in scaling these technologies to full-size applications.
The context: The Hyper Flight service, set to launch in 2025 from a few potential sites in Australia, will utilise Gilmour's orbital launch vehicle technology.
Australia's largest space startup said the service will provide a real-life environment for researchers and companies to test, demonstrate, and advance their innovations to higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) in Australia.
Gilmour billed the new service as a "sovereign, Australian solution for a low-cost, rapid turnkey, hypersonic testbed", essential for translating early-stage research into high TRL technologies and platforms that can be used by the Australian Defence Force and its allies.
In February, the venture-capital backed startup raised $55 million in a Series D funding round for the manufacture, test and launch of rockets and satellites to orbit.
What they said: Gilmour Space's director of launch vehicles, David Doyle, said: "We've witnessed a surge in the research and development of hypersonic vehicles, materials, and other related technologies in recent years, especially since AUKUS".
"However, as many of these ideas progress from concept to prototyping and testing, we're also seeing a growing bottleneck in high-speed flight test capabilities, beyond what ground-based shock tunnel testing and simulations can offer," he said
The source: Gilmour Space media release
