New Delhi: The Kestrel Initial Demonstrator (KID) cargo capsule by Spanish New Space startup Orbital Paradigm was one of the 16 payloads on board the anomalous
PSLV-C62 flight, that began tumbling close to the end of a planned coast of the third stage, resulting in a suborbital flight. This capsule survived the flight and managed to relay information. Now, Orbital Paradigm has released additional information about the flight, where the KID was tested well beyond the design specification, achieving 4 out of the 5 objectives of the mission, even though the flight was off-nominal.
The only reason that Orbital Paradigm is not declaring the mission a success is because of a failure to deliver the data for the customer payloads on board. Despite being a technology demonstration mission, there were payloads from potential customers. Orbital Paradigm flew a small-scale version of its Kestrel cargo capsule, meant for returning experiments conducted in space back to the ground, assembled by a small team of nine engineers within a budget of $1 million, over the course of a year. The hero of this story is the separation ring designed by UARX Space that reached the conditions necessary for trigger release of the capsule, because of atmospheric heating.
KID was flung off from the launcher
The KID capsule separated from the launcher at an incredible speed of Mach 20, crossing the peak G-load until 28 g, which is almost twice the nominal scenario. 190 seconds of telemetry was relayed, indicating that the payloads remained between 15ºC and 30ºC during the reentry. Despite the degraded conditions, the KID capsule separated from the launch vehicle, powered on, and began transmitting data. Orbital Paradigm was able to qualify the vehicle under harsh return conditions. In the statement on LinkedIn, Orbital Paradigm said, “Flying with PSLV was a honor. It’s a great launcher, and it will come back even better.”
