The world's first 3 D-printed rocket made it off the launch pad on Wednesday night but failed to reach orbit in a key test flight by a California-based aerospace startup.
Relativity Space's Terran 1 booster lifted off at 11: 25 p.m. ET from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Mission controllers reported that the rocket experienced an anomaly with its upper stage that prevented it from reaching orbit several minutes into the flight. The upper stage is designed to ignite separate engines mid-flight to boost it into space.
The Terran 1 rocket was not carrying any cargo or satellites on its inaugural flight. The test mission, nicknamed Good Luck, Have Fun, was designed to allow engineers to study how the booster performs on the launch pad and throughout its journey into space.
No one has ever attempted to launch a 3D-printed rocket into space, and while we didn't make it all the way today, we collected enough data to show that flying 3 D-printed rockets is possible, said Arwa Tizani Kelly, a test and launch technical program manager for Relativity Space.
There were no other details about the anomaly. Engineering teams will analyze the data from the flight in the coming days to determine what happened to the rocket.