UP Aerospace
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| Private | |
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado |
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Key people
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Jerry Larson, President |
| Website | Official website |
UP Aerospace, Inc. is a private spaceflight corporation headquartered in Denver, Colorado. UP Aerospace provides ultra-low cost space access and payload transportation for corporate, military and educational payloads, via their SpaceLoft XL sounding rocket launch vehicles.
UP Aerospace was started in the late 1990s by Jerry Larson, an aerospace engineer who had long been involved in the space program as an employee of Lockheed Martin. Larson was also a member of the Civilian Space eXploration Team (CSXT), which in 2004 became the first amateur organization to launch a rocket into space. The company was incorporated in 2004.
The first launch of the SpaceLoft XL occurred on September 25, 2006 from Spaceport America in Upham, New Mexico. The vehicle failed to go higher than 40,000 ft due to a malfunction attributed to faulty fin design and unexpected aerodynamic effects.
UP Aerospace has conducted eight launches from Spaceport America during 2006-2009, including three in 2009 They plan to "double the number of customer launches from Spaceport America to six or more in 2010 as demand for the company's services increases."
As of November 2015 the company is developing an orbital small satellite launch vehicle known as Spyder, with support from NASA.
On April 28, 2007, some of the cremated remains of actor James Doohan, who played Chief Engineer Scott on the 1960s television series Star Trek, and from astronaut Gordon Cooper, were rocketed into suborbital space (along with ashes of about 200 other people) by UP Aerospace from Spaceport America. This was the first successful launch from the site. The payload container was recovered 18 May 2007.
As of August 2007, UP Aerospace began offering low-cost launches to youth and students through the Space Generation Advisory Council. Under this arrangement members of the Space Generation can send their own experiments or novelty payloads into space for as low as US$2000 per experiment. From 2008, the Space Generation Advisory Council will host a range of competitions for youth to address specific technical or logistical challenges through the design of their own UP Aerospace TinySat module.
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Wikipedia