Starchaser Industries Limited, a British entry for the X Prize competition announced Thursday the successful piloted test drop of its Nova 2 rocket capsule.
According to a statement from the company, Starchaser successfully drop tested their capsule from a Fairfield C123K aircraft on Tuesday, July 22 at 9:15 a.m. EST near Kingman, Arizona.
The winner of the X Prize's $10 million purse must privately finance, build and launch a suborbital spaceship capable of carrying three people to 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) altitude; return safely to Earth; then repeats the feat with the same ship within two weeks.
The capsule was piloted by parachute expert Ted Strong and released from an altitude of 10,000 feet.
A static line immediately deployed a 10-foot (3-meter) drogue parachute to stabilize the descent of the craft, which was travelling at approximately 100 mph (484 km/hour). Some five seconds later, the pilot oriented the capsule into a horizontal position and then deployed the main steerable canopy. He then flew the capsule "glider fashion" to a precision landing at the Red Lake drop zone some 50 miles (80 km) north of Kingman, the statement said.
"We have proved the design of the rocket and capsule both on paper and in the air, it's now time to show the world that we mean business and move on to the manned phase of our rocket program," Steve Bennett, Starchaser Industries CEO said in a statement.
One further test flight will be conducted before British pilot Steve Bennett takes control of the craft for its final qualifying flight scheduled to take place at dawn on Friday 25th July. Once this series of tests has been completed, the Nova 2 capsule will be fitted atop the Starchaser 4 rocket in preparation for a manned rocket flight to an altitude of at least 30,000 feet.
Weighing in at 250 kg and measuring 3 meters in length, the single seater Nova 2 capsule has become Britain's first manned rocket capsule and has been developed to test a variety of systems for use in project Thunderbird; Starchaser Industries entry into X Prize.
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