Lunar Rocket successfully launches a Shadow I rocket at Cape Canaveral with a student-made payload.
The Lunar Rocket & Rover Company (LRRC), Boeing and Lockheed Martin are the only companies that are authorized to launch rocket systems from Cape Canaveral. LRRC is a Launch System Provider that has designed and markets a family of sub-orbital and orbital rocket systems. The space exploration business demands the highest level of industry expertise, as well as lasting relationships with government organizations and the nation's rocket ranges. Management has invested the time and money to establish these essential relationships.
The Lunar Rocket & Rover Co. launched its third Shadow I sub-orbital rocket system on September 1, 2004 from Cape Canaveral, and is the only participant in the suborbital market approved to launch from Cape Canaveral's rocket launch facility. LRRC recently concluded a successful project with Oak Middle School in which over 500 6th and 8th grade science students produced a series of payload recovery decelerator devices. Technically known as a "starute," the device resembles a squared-off parachute. Several of the student-manufactured decelerators were subjected to repeated tests for flight-worthiness, flotation, payload tracking by satellite and recoverability. Once testing was complete, students then assembled a final decelerator, which has been successfully packaged for ejection from the Shadow I's PWN-12XE payload dart. The payload itself consists of two homing devices, one for long-range satellite tracking using the near-Earth-orbit (NEO) Argos satellites that are used to track marine mammals and the like. This is the first time that the Argos system is being used to track a rocket payload. The second homing device is a short-range VHF transponder that will allow more precise GPS locating capability to enable the payload to be recovered from the Atlantic Ocean by boat.
The original CCAT funding for LRRC enabled the company to successfully redesign the payload dart (second stage) for the Shadow I rocket system. The new dart uses composite materials that reduce vehicle weight, thereby allowing a larger payload. Follow-on awards were given to LRRC to design and build a complete LAU-700 Mobile Launch System for the Shadow I series of launch vehicles so that at a later stage, student-built science payloads may be launched suborbitally from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, as well as from other U.S. launch sites.
LRRC was recently awarded a commercial contract from the French Military Meteorological Group, Service d'Aeronomie du CNRS, for four (4) PWN-12XE Dart Systems. The PWN-12X is the company's designation for the redesigned dart system underwritten by the first CCAT PDT&E award to LRRC.
Oak Middle School students tune in to a homing transponder being used to track the Decelerator's position.
Oak Middle School students pose alongside one of their completed Decelerators.
A Decelerator being ocean-tested off Long Beach, California.
For more information, please contact:
Juli Gandasatria, Sr. Technology Program Manager
Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization
E-mail: jgandasa@csusb.edu
Phone: 909-537-7758 / Fax: 909-537-7450