The University of Hawaii’s first space launch has been delayed three times since 2013, with liftoff of the low-cost, small-satellite delivery system pushed back from January to the fall due to technology and timing issues, officials said.
The Super Strypi is expected to cut costs by using "proven" suborbital "sounding rocket" technology, including a simplified rail launcher, according to Aerojet Rocketdyne, which is providing the rocket motors.
The launch from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai will carry UH’s HiakaSat satellite and a dozen very small "CubeSats" on the largest rocket ever launched from a rail system, UH and Aerojet said.
The mission manager for the launch is the Air Force’s Operationally Responsive Space Office, with project partners Sandia National Laboratories, PMRF, Aerojet Rocketdyne and UH’s Hawaiʻi Space Flight Laboratory, according to the university.
The 110-pound low-Earth orbiting HiakaSat will demonstrate UH-developed long-wave infrared hyper-spectral imaging. It will be outfitted with two color cameras to provide wide- and narrow-view images of Earth. Images will be transmitted back that provide data on global warming, ocean temperatures, coral bleaching, volcanoes and other environmental issues, UH said.
SpaceNews.com reported that the launch, designated ORS-4 by the Air Force, was originally scheduled for October 2013 but was delayed to November 2014 and then January.
In an interview this month with SpaceNews, Air Force Col. John Anttonen, director of the Operationally Responsive Space Office, said the new launch date for the 55-foot, 62,000-pound Hawaii rocket will be in the fall.
"We had some range issues, just accessibility to the range, but we had issues on our first-stage motor" including a design flaw, Anttonen said of ORS-4, which uses three solid-rocket motors.
"We came to the conclusion that, yes, we could go fly with this system at a slightly elevated risk. The important part there was to get with our mission partners — the satellites we’re flying — and get them to agree that they’re willing to go ahead and take that additional risk. So they accepted that."
Anttonen said what the Air Force is looking at with the launch is, "How do we speed up the range operations?" A typical launch can run 90 days. "ORS-4 is going to do it in 21," he said. "We’re really trying to compress the time it takes to go from the hangar to the pad to space."
Spaceflight Now said development challenges on the first-stage motor included design and delivery of the rocket motor case and the integrated rocket motor.
The ORS office has spent $45 million so far on design and development of the Super Strypi launch system and the ORS-4 mission, according to the publication.
"It’s the first flight of a rocket for that purpose going from PMRF, so I think that it’s normal that there are engineering challenges and scheduling challenges that go on," said Luke Flynn, director of the Hawai‘i Space Flight Laboratory.
Flynn said PMRF is "dedicated to doing safe launches," and the facility "wouldn’t launch anything that could be a hazard to the range, to any of their facilities or to the community."
When the Air Force’s Anttonen talks about an elevated risk, "it just means that there is a technical risk because it’s the first launch," Flynn said.
UH said it would like to be able to launch small satellites on a regular basis, which would attract companies looking for affordable ways to test space technology.
