The Exploration Company completed a drop test in the Mojave Desert as part of its Nyx cargo spacecraft development program, the company announced on Thursday.
The test, which was completed on May 19, used a dedicated drop-test vehicle to help engineers evaluate how well parachutes and vehicle dynamics brought the capsule to a controlled stop on Earth.
The details: During the mission, the drop-test vehicle was hoisted by a helicopter to 9,100 feet. After detaching from the helicopter, the test vehicle went through the process of deploying drogue parachutes, transitioning to main parachutes, and eventually being recovered when it safely reached the ground.
“Initial analysis confirms that the required conditions and event timings were achieved, including nominal extraction and handover from the drogues to the main parachutes,” Matt Darley, senior parachute engineer at The Exploration Company, wrote in a blog post. “The vehicle dynamics observed during initial release and handover were in line with expectations for this [drop test vehicle] configuration, including its mass and inertia range.”
Go Nyx: The European space company is building Nyx to deliver cargo to space stations in orbit—and make return trips to bring cargo, science experiments, and materials manufactured in space back to Earth. The capsule is intended to fly with any heavy-launch rocket, and can be refurbished after landing to conduct multiple missions.
Nyx is also designed to operate beyond LEO to deliver cargo to the Moon.
What’s next: Nyx is expected to fly its first demo mission in orbit in 2028.
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Vienna-based startup Tumbleweed announced this week that it shipped its first satellite—called Oasis Alpha—to launch integrator Exolaunch ahead of a scheduled flight in July.
While Austria has contributed to many international and academic satellite missions in the past, and commissioned its first military sat in March, Tumbleweed’s represents the country’s first fully commercial satellite mission.
Meet Tumbleweed: Founded in 2024, Tumbleweed’s ethos is that getting to space for the first time should be quick and easy. That mentality has driven the company’s rapid development pace, which took Oasis Alpha from design to delivery in under nine months—for less than €500,000 ($580,078).
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