LAS CRUCES, N.M. (October 1, 2024) – The 21st suborbital space flight by Colorado-based UP Aerospace from the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport launched at 7:09 a.m. local time Tuesday (Oct. 1, 2024).

"We congratulate UP Aerospace on this spectacular and successful space launch," said Scott McLaughlin, Executive Director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. "It was quite beautiful, taking place just as the sun was rising over the quiet desert. We know how important this launch was to UP and its payload customers, some of which are from right here in New Mexico."

One of Spaceport America's foundational tenants, UP Aerospace partnered with NASA's Flight Opportunities program on its latest flight, SL-15, which featured its SpaceLoft rocket shuttling a variety of payloads to suborbital heights.

One payload was a suite of multi-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers from NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, the European Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, and their contractors Fraunhofer and Qascom. GNSS refers to any satellite constellation that provides global positioning, navigation, and timing services, including GPS (United States) and Galileo (Europe). Determining the scope of interoperability was of paramount importance to the flight test, the results of which will be presented to the International Committee on GNSS (ICG) as part of the United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). 

Las Cruces, N.M.-based Immortal Data, collaboratively with New Mexico Tech, built a payload to experiment on spacecraft health monitoring and real-time systems. Immortal Data also tested out and collected environmental data on some of its own equipment as it relates to product development.

"New Mexico Tech was part of a previous FAA-sponsored initiative known as the Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation (COE CST) to improve flight safety and vehicle cost reduction," explained Dr. Andrei Zagrai, a New Mexico Tech mechanical engineering professor. "Our part on this payload, which was developed under COE CST, is to provide structural health monitoring (SHM) data to spacecraft systems including flight recorders. Both undergraduate students, who designed the payload, and a graduate student, Funmilola Nwokocha, who used this process as a part of her PhD theses, contributed to this flight test." The COE CST project concluded in 2022.

An additional payload was an advanced prototype ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) transmitter that could potentially be used for independent, low-cost tracking of space launch vehicles.

NASA's Flight Opportunities program demonstrates technologies developed by industry, academia, and NASA and other government scientists through testing with a variety of commercial flight providers. Available flight platforms include suborbital rockets, aircraft flying parabolic profiles to achieve reduced gravity, and high-altitude balloons.

UP Aerospace conducted its first suborbital flight from Spaceport America in 2006, and maintains a launch complex, payload processing center, and a space propulsion center at the site in Sierra County.