Flight Qualification of the Red Kite Solid Rocket Motor

Abstract

The Red Kite© is a commercially available, serially produced solid propellant sounding rocket motor in the class of one ton of net explosive mass. It was flight qualified in November 2023 at the Andøya Space launch site in Norway after four years of development. The flight was named SOAR (Single Stage Operational Assessment of Red Kite) and was administered by DLR Mobile Rocket Base. Main objective of the flight was to collect a body of data sufficient to validate flight worthiness of the Red Kite. Secondary objective was to propel APEX-TD (Air Breathing Propulsion Experiment - Technology Demonstrator) by the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology to high speed in the low atmosphere to enable in-situ research on the air flow inside a scramjet type duct. Both objectives required live streaming of data to ground because the vehicle was not equipped with a parachute recovery system. Both objectives were fully met. The vehicle reached an apogee of 71 km, a maximum speed of Mach 4.8 and impacted in the Norwegian Sea 58 km from the launch site. Key trajectory parameters are all within one standard deviation of predictions. Thus, SOAR demonstrated the capability of Red Kite and DLR MORABA supplementary systems to provide the scientific community with an easy, reliable and highly customizable flight from one of multiple launch sites around the world. The paper describes the SOAR objectives, design, execution and results including noteworthy observations from vehicle and ground based instruments.