PAYLOADS AND MISSIONS
10 KG
MAX PAYLOAD WEIGHT (22 LBS)
100 KM
MAX ALTITUDE
M 3.5
1st SUPERSONIC FLIGHT
AURORA PAYLOADS
A Transformative Platform for Suborbital Payloads
Built to fly twice per day, Aurora embodies the reliability and turnaround efficiency of modern aviation.
Missions can be flown, recovered, and re-flown within the same day, enabling campaign-style operations. This high-cadence model allows data to be gathered across repeated missions, accelerating research, development, and system validation.
Flight Features
-
Customizable flight profiles
-
Multiple flights per day
-
Payload access within 60 minutes of landing
Currently Accepting
Payload Missions
PAYLOAD
Fly campaigns.
Not one-off missions.
Aurora is a rapid-turnaround platform for suborbital payloads, supports missions across:
-
Atmospheric science
-
Microgravity research and manufacturing
-
Space technology development and qualification
-
Defense and domain awareness applications
Our flight operations team works alongside you from mission design through to flight operations.
With customer missions already completed and expanding performance across flight profiles, you can now book to fly from Christchurch, NZ and Oklahoma, USA.
Aurora with Scout Space optical lens payload onboard
RESEARCH
Enabling Breakthroughs Missions Across Key Industries
Atmospheric Science:
Measure upper-atmosphere composition, climate dynamics, and weather phenomena. Repeatably target specific layers and locations to build more accurate models.
Microgravity Testing & Manufacturing: Access up to 100 seconds of high- quality microgravity for experiments and small-scale manufacturing. Refine experiments with consistent, repeatable microgravity conditions.
Technology Development:
Accelerate your hardware development by testing and qualifying systems in a representative flight environment. Reduce program risk through flight heritage and demonstrated airworthiness.
Domain Awareness:
Aurora’s payload hatch can accommodate various multispectral instruments. Payloads can be pointed to targets above and below the horizon for up to 80 seconds.
Aurora with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory data acquisition payload.
RESEARCH
Mission
Profiles
Aurora flies a boost-glide trajectory, where the aircraft boosts under rocket power, before gliding back to land. Aurora’s engine can be both throttled and restarted in-flight, expanding the variety of flights profiles possible.
Every flight plan starts with your mission objectives. Aurora’s flexible flight profiles are tailored to deliver the required conditions.
Generic Spaceshot
RESEARCH
Microgravity
When flying the Spaceshot trajectory, the Aurora can experience over two minutes of microgravity, depending on payload mass. During this time, the aircraft may be pointed and held at any attitude for directing optical payloads.
The microgravity times are derived using a microgravity threshold of 10-4 g, (10- 3 m/s2). Increasing the microgravity threshold to 10-3 G (10-2 m/s2) gives an additional 40 seconds of microgravity time.
Additionally, reducing the payload weight results in the increases in microgravity time seen below.
DEFENSE
Target Presentation
Dawn’s Aurora spaceplane provides novel capabilities such as rapid deployment, high-altitude performance, and safe return.
This extends to mission capabilities such as pseudo-satellite capabilities, on-demand high-altitude observations, and target presentation. Its ability to replicate demanding flight profiles offers a valuable platform for safe, reusable testing without the risks or costs of traditional alternatives.
Boost-Glide Profile
The Boost-Glide Profile is optimised to reach high Mach numbers within the atmosphere for supersonic and target presentation use-cases. With this profile, the Aurora can reach speeds up to Mach 3.7 and perform a range of maneuvers in the supersonic regime. The key phases of flight are shown above.
