Photo: Kratos
People doing their things in close vicinity to NASA facilities are probably used by now to hearing a lot of strange and loud noises, so to them the sound of a rocket being launched might not seem all that spectacular. But if one listened really carefully to what took place on October 24 at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, they might have noticed the sound made by a brand new rocket, one named after the Greek King of the Gods: Zeus.
Zeus is a rocket imagined by defense contractor Kratos to serve as a platform for "hypersonic tests, ballistic missile targets, scientific research, sounding rocket and special customer missions." A launch system, thus, that can be used by the military and some civilian companies to advance their space-related goals.
The rocket first came into the news a little more than a year ago, and it seems to have progressed very rapidly. So fast, in fact, that Kratos announced this month that the rocket's first flight, a test run, took place on October 24.
Zeus is a 32.5-inch in diameter solid rocket motor (SRM) that can reach hypersonic speeds and should provide "substantial performance improvements over similar legacy rockets." It has been designed in such a way as to be compatible with existing launch infrastructure and payloads.
Kratos did not go into the specifics of this first flight, but it did reveal that two motors were involved: the Zeus 1 initial prototype, and the Zeus 2, the follow-up design. The lessons learned during the flight will be used to get the required qualifications so that more testing can be performed.
The exact specifications of the new rocket motor are not known, but we are to expect a piece of hardware that should come with better performance than existing solutions, while at the same time offering the same payload capacity. The stuff it carries into orbit can be a bit more complex, the rocket should be able to fly more often, and also reach higher altitudes and speeds.
If everything goes according to plan, the new suborbital launch vehicle should start rolling off production lines in the first quarter of next year. Handling the SRMs' production is Kratos' partner in crime, L3Harris.
Kratos said back in April that at least nine Zeus flights have already been commissioned by its unnamed customers, but we don't have any actual details on those either, given the mostly secretive nature of the missions.
We do know, however, at least one possible application for the Zeus motor, and that would be in the DART AE hypersonic drone being put together by Australian company Hypersonix. 20 of these drones were being planned in the summer of last year, but we have not received any updates on the project since that time.
The rocket first came into the news a little more than a year ago, and it seems to have progressed very rapidly. So fast, in fact, that Kratos announced this month that the rocket's first flight, a test run, took place on October 24.
Zeus is a 32.5-inch in diameter solid rocket motor (SRM) that can reach hypersonic speeds and should provide "substantial performance improvements over similar legacy rockets." It has been designed in such a way as to be compatible with existing launch infrastructure and payloads.
Kratos did not go into the specifics of this first flight, but it did reveal that two motors were involved: the Zeus 1 initial prototype, and the Zeus 2, the follow-up design. The lessons learned during the flight will be used to get the required qualifications so that more testing can be performed.
The exact specifications of the new rocket motor are not known, but we are to expect a piece of hardware that should come with better performance than existing solutions, while at the same time offering the same payload capacity. The stuff it carries into orbit can be a bit more complex, the rocket should be able to fly more often, and also reach higher altitudes and speeds.
If everything goes according to plan, the new suborbital launch vehicle should start rolling off production lines in the first quarter of next year. Handling the SRMs' production is Kratos' partner in crime, L3Harris.
Kratos said back in April that at least nine Zeus flights have already been commissioned by its unnamed customers, but we don't have any actual details on those either, given the mostly secretive nature of the missions.
We do know, however, at least one possible application for the Zeus motor, and that would be in the DART AE hypersonic drone being put together by Australian company Hypersonix. 20 of these drones were being planned in the summer of last year, but we have not received any updates on the project since that time.
Google News