Back-to-back engine failures doomed a privately developed Australian rocket moments after liftoff Tuesday, cutting short a long-shot attempt to reach orbit with the country's first homegrown launch vehicle.
The 82-foot-tall (25-meter) Eris rocket ignited its four main engines and took off from its launch pad in northeastern Australia at 6:35 pm EDT (22:35 UTC) Tuesday. Liftoff occurred at 8:35 am local time Wednesday at Bowen Orbital Spaceport, the Eris rocket's launch site in the Australian state of Queensland.
But the rocket quickly lost power from two of its engines and stalled just above the launch pad before coming down in a nearby field. The crash sent a plume of smoke thousands of feet over the launch site, which sits on a remote stretch of coastline on Australia's northeastern frontier.
Gilmour Space, the private company that developed the rocket, said in a statement that there were no injuries and "no adverse environmental impacts" in the aftermath of the accident. The launch pad also appeared to escape any significant damage.
The company's cofounder and CEO, Adam Gilmour, spoke with Ars a few hours after the launch. Gilmour said he wasn't surprised by the outcome of the Eris rocket's inaugural test flight, which lasted just 14 seconds.
"I didn't expect that we would get to orbit," he said. "Never did. I thought best case was maybe 40 seconds of flight time, but I'll take 14 as a win."
The company shared a video of the flight on X.
Liftoff completed, launch tower cleared, stage 1 tested.
Awesome result for a first test launch. pic.twitter.com/EYbNbGDz3l — Gilmour Space (@GilmourSpace) July 30, 2025
The Eris launcher consists of three stages, with four of Gilmour's Sirius engines on the booster, a single Sirius engine on the second stage, and an engine named Phoenix on the third stage. The Sirius engines use hybrid propulsion, with a solid fuel and hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer, while Phoenix burns a mixture of kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen. The Eris rocket is designed to place payloads of up to 670 pounds (305 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit, according to Gilmour's website.