Kinetic test launch

Country	Satellie	Rocket	Location	Date
Soviet Union	Sputnik 1	Sputnik PS	Baikonur/ Kazakhstan	04-Oct-57
United States	Explorer 1	Juno 1	Cape Canaveral US	01-Feb-58
France	Asterix	Diamant A	CIEES/ Hammaguir Algleria	28-Nov-65
Japan	Ohsumi	Lambda 4S	Uchinoura, Japan	11-Feb-70
China	Dong Fang Hong 1	Long March1	Jiuquan, China	24-Apr-70
United Kingdom	Prospero	Black Arrow	Woomera, Australia	28-Oct-71
European space Agency	Cat-1 Obelix	Ariane 1	Kourou, French Guiana	24-Dec-79
India	Rohini RS-1	SLV	Sriharikota, India	18-Jul-80
Israel	Ofeq1	Shavit	Palmachinm, Israel	19-Sep-88
Ukraine	Strela X6 Russian	Tsyklon 3	Plesetsk, Russia	28-Sep-91
Russia	Kosmos 2175	Soyz-U	Plesetsk Riussia	21-Jan-92
Iran	Omid	Safir-1A	Semnan, Iran	02-Feb-09
North Korea	Kwangmyongsong-3 Unit2	Unha-3	Sohae, North Korea	12-Dec-12

 

Orbital accelerator, using a giant vacuum chamber, and a rotating hypersonic tether, and a massive centrifuge force which essentially catapult satellites into orbit. The first kinetic launch only used about 20 percent of the system’s total power.

SpinLaunch, Long Beach, California-based company, is building an alternative way of launching spacecraft to orbit, by using kinetic energy as its primary method to get off the ground with a vacuum sealed centrifuge spinning the rocket at several times the speed of sound before launching in New Mexico.

The SpinLaunch suborbital accelerator is about 165 feet tall, with a vaccum chamber that holds a rotating arm, which accelerates the projectile to high speed and then in less than a millisecond releases the suborbital projectile  about 10 feet long at several thousands of miles per hour.

“It is radically different way to accelerate projectiles and launch vehicles to hypersonic speeds using a ground-based system, and about building a company and space launch system that is going to enter into the commercial markets with a very high cadence and launch at the lowest cost in the industry”, Jonathan Yaney, SpinLaunch CEO said.

SpinLaunch,  founded in 2014, by Yaney, has raised $110 million to date, from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Airbus Ventures, Catapult Ventures, Lauder Partners and McKinley Capital.