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The front fell off a spaceship

The Gilmour Space launch in Queensland didn’t take off as planned.
Leon Smith
Leon Smith
Planetarium Coordinator
The front fell off a spaceship

In a serious yet unintentionally comedic moment, Australia’s first home grown orbital rocket launch attempt was scrubbed in the early hours of May 16 2025 when the front of the rocket fell off. 

The technical description of the incident is “the payload fairings were jettisoned early” but these days it’s impossible to say anything about the forward section of a vehicle malfunctioning without saying the iconic line.

Ok, roll clip:

Video: The front fell off. Credit: Clarke and Dawe. 

TAKE TWO

Now we’ve got that out of the way, Gilmour Space – a private spaceflight company headquartered in Queensland – has been quietly developing their Eris rocket for about 10 years now. 

They were finally ready to launch their first test flight from the purpose-built Bowen space facility on the northeast coast of Queensland. 

Australia has hosted rocket launches before, mostly of European and US origin, but never achieved the combination of an Australian built rocket reaching orbit.  

With the goal of carrying a jar of Vegemite into space as a test payload (yes, seriously), this first test flight of Eris would take the rocket northeast over the Coral Sea and reach orbit after about 10 minutes. 

That was the plan anyway.  

IT WASN’T TO BE

Sadly, due to having more important things to think about, Gilmour Space was not live streaming any video footage of the launch and most observers were relegated to waiting for updates on X (formerly known as Twitter). 

In the early hours of the morning of Friday May 16, the update came through. 

Credit: Gilmour Space/X

For those of you unfamiliar with rocket science, this is the payload fairing.  

Image: Payload Fairings. Credit: Gilmour Space, markup by Smith/Scitech. 

VEGE-MITE NOT MAKE IT

The payload fairing protects the cargo (in this case, Vegemite) from the atmosphere. It also makes the rocket more aerodynamic during the early stages of launch. 

It is designed to fall away from the rocket when it is high enough off the ground to be above most of Earth’s atmosphere, where wind resistance doesn’t matter anymore. Premature jettisoning of the payload fairing would almost certainly destroy a rocket in flight due to extreme aerodynamic stress. 

Needless to say, once the fairing was gone, the launch wasn’t going to happen. On the bright side though, the Vegemite survived. 

Credit: Gilmour Space/X

INFINITY AND BEYOND

Gilmour Space have postponed any future launch attempts until they understand the cause of this incident, though they wasted no time in shipping in a new payload fairing. 

Credit: Gilmour Space/X

As anybody who has played Kerbal Space Program would know, it is important to check yo’ stagin’.

Leon Smith
About the author
Leon Smith
Leon runs the Scitech Planetarium. It's pretty sweet. Theoretical physics is his expertise, science communication is his passion. Tends not to mince words. He stays up too late and drinks too much coffee.
View articles
Leon runs the Scitech Planetarium. It's pretty sweet. Theoretical physics is his expertise, science communication is his passion. Tends not to mince words. He stays up too late and drinks too much coffee.
View articles

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