Displaying items by tag: suborbital launch

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a Danish non-profit aerospace organization that has constructed and launched several privately built rockets.

The organization's main goal is to develop relatively inexpensive forms of suborbital manned spaceflight outside government programs and the influence of large, for-profit corporations. Founded in 2008, the project has accomplished a successful sea launch of an experimental hybrid rocket dubbed HEAT-1X carrying a full-scale human model. The test was performed in June 2011 from a seagoing mobile launch platform in the Baltic Sea, but had to be aborted after 21 seconds at an altitude of 2.8 km when the rocket began to veer off course. On June 23, 2013, the team successfully launched the actively guided SAPPHIRE-1 rocket to an altitude of 8.5 kilometers.

In addition to their main stated goal to achieve suborbital manned spaceflight, Copenhagen Suborbitals has also focused on fundraising solely through donations and sponsorships.

Virgin Galactic is a company within Richard Branson's Virgin Group which plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to space tourists, suborbital launches for space science missions and orbital launches of small satellites.

Further in the future Virgin Galactic hopes to offer orbital human spaceflights as well. Virgin Galactic's spacecraft are launched from a large aeroplane, giving the spacecraft more initial speed and altitude than if it were launched from the ground.