A small reentry capsule demonstrator built by Spanish space logistics start-up Orbital Paradigm survived a launch vehicle failure earlier this month and successfully transmitted flight data, marking an unexpected technical milestone despite the overall mission being declared a failure.<\/p>\n
The capsule, known as KID (Kestrel Initial Demonstrator), was launched on Jan. 12 aboard a PSLV rocket from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India. An anomaly during the rocket\u2019s third-stage burn led to the loss of the primary payload and most secondary spacecraft. Orbital Paradigm said its demonstrator nonetheless separated from the launch vehicle and transmitted about 190 seconds of flight data before impacting the ocean.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we understood that the launch was non-nominal it was a bit of a hit for us,\u201d said Francesco Cacciatore. \u201cI think the launch livestream was still ongoing when the team saw that we had 190 seconds of flight data transmitted and received. We needed a few minutes to realize it was real data and not a glitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Founded in 2023 and based in Valencia, Orbital Paradigm is developing a reusable capsule called Kestrel, designed to host payloads of up to 120 kilograms in orbit for missions lasting as long as three months before returning them to Earth. The company has said it aims to conduct monthly capsule flights in the 2030s.<\/p>\n
KID is the first in a series of subscale demonstrators intended to reduce technical risk ahead of full-scale missions. The capsule was developed in less than a year with a budget of under 1 million euros ($1.1 million), the company said.<\/p>\n
According to Orbital Paradigm, KID endured conditions beyond its design specifications yet achieved separation, power-on and data transmission, including after reentry. However, the company said the mission could not be declared a success because customer payload data was scheduled to be transmitted later in the flight, which did not occur before ocean impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on initial analysis, it seems that we achieved four out of five launch milestones, albeit through an off-nominal profile,\u201d the company said in a statement on Jan. 13. \u201cThe failure to deliver customers\u2019 data prevents us from declaring the mission a success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the setback, Orbital Paradigm said it plans to proceed with a larger and more advanced demonstrator, with a launch targeted for early 2027, as it continues development of its Kestrel reusable reentry system.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A small reentry capsule demonstrator built by Spanish space logistics start-up Orbital Paradigm survived a launch vehicle failure earlier this month and successfully transmitted flight data, marking an unexpected technical milestone despite the overall mission being declared a failure. The capsule, known as KID (Kestrel Initial Demonstrator), was launched on Jan. 12 aboard a PSLV […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[244,242,7689,7690,860,6564,6416,133,3030],"class_list":["post-21066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-francesco-cacciatore","tag-orbital-paradigm","tag-pslv","tag-pslv-rocket","tag-reentry-capsule","tag-space-logistics","tag-spain"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21066"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21066\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}