Red Kite Sounding Rocket Motor—Qualification and Application Spectrum

What is it about?

The Red Kite is a commercially available sounding rocket motor developped by the German Aerospace Center DLR and Bayern-Chemie GmbH. It features a 910 kg solid propellant grain that is consumed over a total thrust time of 13 s. The motor is primarily designed to be used as a powerful booster stage to military surplus and other commercially available sounding rocket motors with target applications ranging from classical, suborbital microgravity research to hypersonics testing. Typical payloads will range between 200-600 kg in mass. Classical suborbital trajectories yield apogees between 250-350 km and can provide six to eight minutes of microgravity conditions. Hypersonics testing is supported by suppressed trajectories which provide few minutes of stratospheric flight at Mach numbers ranging between six to ten.

Featured Image