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CASA has granted airspace approval to Gilmour Space Technologies to blast off its Eris rocket for the first time in late March.
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The green light marks the final regulatory hurdle that needed to be cleared and follows the Australian Space Agency granting the company a launch licence in November.
Gilmour said it plans to have 50 staff based at its Bowen spaceport to help conduct the blast-off, with a two-week launch window now pencilled in.
The lift-off will be a hugely significant moment for the local space industry, with its three-stage vehicle being the first Australian-designed and manufactured orbital rocket.
Speaking at a conference in Canberra, founder Adam Gilmour said: “It’s the first time we have formally set a launch date, both with the regulators and internally in the company. There’s a buzz that it’s all getting real.
“People have to be on their toes and get everything ready and overcome issues that come up very quickly.”
The company has been developing Eris for eight years and hopes to address a gap in the global market for small satellite launches.
It had planned for an inaugural blast-off in April 2024 but faced a lengthy delay in obtaining its final permit from the Australian Space Agency, which came to an end two months ago. Previously, a date of late mid-January had been muted.
The news comes weeks after the federal government relaxed the laws around launches to better consider the high likelihood of failure.
The changes to the Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018 include an amendment that means that if no property is destroyed, a longer investigation can now be avoided in the event of an explosion.
Gilmour has repeatedly stressed that the initial blast-off of Eris is likely to end in failure, while SpaceX engineers in 2023 famously celebrated when the first launch of Starship ended in failure.
“This is the second round of reforms over the past 18 months to the act, which will support our fast-moving and highly commercialised space sector,” Enrico Palermo, the head of the Australian Space Agency, said.
“These changes will remove inefficiency and improve flexibility without compromising safety.”
In a LinkedIn post, Gilmour called the amendments “positive news” and said they would bring Australia’s regulations closer to the US and those of other nations.
