NASA’s two-stage Terrier-Orion sounding rocket launched Sept. 21 from the U.S. space agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to test several new technologies, including an autonomous flight safety system designed to destroy the rocket if it veers off course.
The rocket also carried a package of seven sensors to observe the rocket’s performance and a Federal Aviation Administration payload designed to inform aircraft and air traffic control systems of the in-flight location and velocity of launch vehicles that could pose a collision hazard to aircraft.
“Preliminary indications are that all payload experiment systems received good data,” NASA said in a press release.
