Launches
On 25 August 2018, Exos flew an unsuccessful Pathfinder Mission proving SARGE as a reusable launch vehicle. Due to a malfunction of an onboard GPS receiver, the flight was terminated with an engine shutdown prematurely. The rocket reached an altitude of 28 km (planned altitude was 80 km).
The second launch of SARGE took place on 2 March 2019. Due to winds, the flight reached an altitude of 20 km (planned altitude was 80 km). It carried several small research payloads.
On 29 June 2019, at 18:00, UTC Exos Aerospace conducted a SARGE launch at the Spaceport America in New Mexico. The flight failed seconds after launch due to loss of control. The rocket was however recovered intact. This was the third SARGE flight, with previous flights in August 2018 and March 2019. The previous flights also suffered failures that prevented the rocket from reaching the planned altitude.
The third flight was carrying educational, research and technology demonstration payloads for nine customers. Among them were a biomedical experiment from the Mayo Clinic and a dust aggregation experiment from University of Central Florida. The status of payloads is unknown,[5] but they were probably recovered intact.
The fourth flight on 26 October 2019, 17:42 UTC, ended in failure. The flight suffered multiple failures: first, the rocket lost control of attitude seconds after launch. Second, the rocket appears to have disintegrated to some degree as several pieces of debris fell back to the ground. Third, the launch vehicle separated from the drogue. Rather than land softly as it had on previous flights, it returned uncontrolled and at high speed. The rocket body crashed near the launch pad nearly three and a half minutes after liftoff. Live footage seems to indicate the nose cone was properly returning under a parachute canopy. The rocket reached a peak altitude of about 12.6 km, far short of the planned altitude of at least 80 kilometers. The flight carried several small research payloads.[6]
Exos Aerospace determined that the fourth flight experienced a structural failure. They plan to build a second SARGE rocket to continue flying. (They have built only one; the same rocket was used on all four launches in 2018–2019.)[7]
