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Source: ONE News -
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New Zealand has entered the space age, blasting a rocket into space just after 2pm on Monday from a launch pad on Great Mercury Island off the Coromandel Coast.
The successful launch came after a day of delays.
In a puff of smoke, Atea-1 accelerated to five times the speed of sound, leaving Great Mercury Island for the great unknown.
At daybreak the weather conditions had been perfect for lift-off. The rocket sat centre stage while the man who paid for it, Mark Rocket, sat in the paddock above.
As the rocket scientists worked from a special underground bunker, a crowd of onlookers gathered together, but the last minute the rocket's final checks didn't check-out after an aerocoupler, which connects the fuel line to the rocket, froze.
A three hour delay became a seven hour delay, but an emergency flight to the mainland brought a replacement part for the rocket's jammed valve and the launch finally went ahead.
Sir Michael Fay, owner of Great Mercury Island, was impressed.
"Boy, it just took off. I think it was hard to comprehend that it could go that fast," says Fay.
Another spectator says the blast-off was absolutely awesome.
"I thought at minus one countdown, she was a fizzer because all I could see was a spark coming out the bottom. And then it just disappeared. It hit the afterburners before the tree tops I reckon," he says.
And with a successful launch now complete the next blast-off could carry anything from someone's ashes to a space age advertising message.
The launch company, Rocket Lab Ltd, started up three years ago with the aim of developing a series of Atea rockets that would make space more accessible, Mark Rocket says.
"This is the first step in a long journey," he says.
The six-metre-long craft should reach speeds of up to Mach 5, flying 120km into the air, before splashing down in the sea, where it will be picked up.
Atea is the Maori word for space as the team wanted an indigenous name for the rockets.
The first rocket Atea-1 has been named Manu Karere by the local Thames iwi, which means Bird Messenger.
