2004 Schedule - Deimos 2

Providing all aspects of the September launches are successful the team will start the development of the next motor in October. It is in this stage, development and testing, that the benefit of our approach to the motor design pays dividends. The Deimos program is based on scalability and the reutilisation of components and knowledge. This has enabled us to iron out any issues as the project progresses allowing the team to solely concentrate on aspects that are specific to the current motor.

Deimos 3 is a motor capable of launching an upper payload section into space, i.e. an altitude in excess of 100 kilometres, the official designated boundary of space. There are several possible launch sites for this vehicle, with the most obvious being Woomera in Australia. Here the rocket will have to be launched at an angle of ten degrees off vertical. This forces the rocket to head down range, whereby ensuring the rockets flight path into a safe zone. It is because of these requirements that the second launch is planned for this year

With the development of the motor beginning in October the static testing phase should commence in February 2004. This will be the first of at least four static tests undertaken this year. The launch of this rocket will depend on three key issues, how the static tests have gone, which launch sites are available to the team and the team's own personal time tables. When all of these come together the team will then set a launch date, which they can work towards.