Washington – Don Aerospace announced on 22 May that it has started taking orders for an unseeded spaceplane, which is capable of taking small payloads on suborbital flights.
The New Zealand company stated that it is starting the sale of Arora Spaceplane, a vehicle capable of carrying six kilograms of payload to a height of 100 km. The first delivery of the vehicle is estimated in 2027.
Don Aerospace is following a model of commercial aviation instead of the spaceflight with Arora, selling the vehicle to customers who will operate it instead of blowing the vehicle on their own. This, the company argues, expand the potential market for the vehicle compared to the traditional approach to selling launch services.
Don Aerospace CEO Stephen Powell said about vehicles launched during the 22 May webinar organized by the Global Spaceport Alliance, “There are many people who will like this ability and will be ready to pay for it, but they can’t just get their hand on it. It is not for sale.”
He said that with the approach of commercial aviation, where airlines are operated by companies that manufacture them, but by airlines. “The airline model presents us with a more scalable model for transporting, and one we really want to draw.”
This reflection of commercial aviation extends to Arora only. The company has been testing versions of the vehicle for many years, including a flight in November 2024, where Mark 2 Arora first reached supersonic speed. On that flight, the vehicle reached the top speed of 1.12 and a peak of 25.1 km.
“This is an aircraft with a rocket performance, not a rocket with wings,” he said. “This is to say, reliability, re -purpose and, eventually, not after scalability, but this airline is cooked from the first day to enable models.”
Don Aerospace is working on the new version of Arora which is capable of sub -arbitrary flights. This includes the increased propalent and engine thrust, as well as the addition of the response control system thrusters to provide control of the atmosphere. Those modifications will be adjusted within the same outer mold line similar to the previous version.
The first Arora suborbital vehicle will be ready for flight within 18 months, which will start a flying test program running from six to nine months. Those testing flights will start at a lower altitude, but will quickly progress to a very high altitude.
On a specific suborbital flight, Arora will fly from a runway and directly head. The vehicle will reach the top speed of Mach 3.5 on a flight and offer about three minutes of microgravity during its peak of its trajectory. The overall flight from Techoff to Landing will last for about half an hour, Powell estimated, most of that time gliding back to a runway landing after the retirement.
Arora is powered by an engine that uses 90% hydrogen peroxide and kerosene D60 propelles. Completely filled, the spaceplane weighs 450 kg and can remove 1,000 meters long from the runway.
Dawn has demonstrated the ability to move around the vehicle for another flight within six hours and Powell said that a four -hour turnaround time should be obtained. “It will make the first aircraft – the first vehicle of any kind, in fact – to fly above the Kármán line twice a day.”
Market and vehicle economics
Don Aerospace is now taking orders for Spaceplane for delivery starting in 2027. The company has not disclosed pricing for the vehicle, and Powell suggested that the company would pricate each customer.
He said that the company estimates, based on market research, that a copy of $ 100,000 is “absolutely tenable”, the price may be higher for missions with more customized flight needs. He can fly Arora 100 times a year and has a design life of 1,000 flights with a total revenue of about $ 100 million per vehicle.
Don Aerospace has attracted some customers for Mark 2 Arora’s test flights, including three universities – Arizona State University, California Polytechnic State University and the University of Johns Hopkins – as well as Scout Space, a company that is developing space domain awareness services.
That “technology bridge”, as Powell said, inspires the company to believe that even a small vehicle like Arora can find a place in the market. The company applies applications as well as testing defense payloads like sensors and communication systems, as well as applications such as microgravity life sciences and semiconductor research in a near place environment.
“With the size of this small vehicle, even with the size of this small vehicle, there is a real commercial demand,” he said.
The announcement of Don Aerospace was welcomed by the Global Spaceport Alliance (GSA), an industry group, whose members include several spaceports, either still in development or who are reducing the infrastructure to support the vertical launch. A spaceplane like Arora creates new possibilities for those spaceports.
GSA President George Need said about Spaceports, “Many of them are regularly launching,” said about spaceports due to infrastructure or lack of places near densely populated areas.
He said, “Vehicles like One Don Aerospace have developed changes in all of them,” he said. “With a small, reusable system that can work with a standard runway, there is no reason that no spaceport with the runway can provide regular access to space.”
