After 54-year wait, Australia’s first attempt at an orbital rocket crashes 14 seconds after liftoff

The first fully Australian-made rocket, Eris-1, just crashed back to Earth 14 seconds after taking off. The launch was the country’s first attempted orbital flight in almost 54 years.

On Tuesday (July 29), at 8:35 a.m. local time (6:35 p.m. ET), the private Australian company Gilmour Space Technologies launched the first of its Eris-class rockets from Bowen Orbital Spaceport in coastal Queensland. However, just 23 seconds after the rocket ignited its engines and only 14 seconds after liftoff, the spacecraft was back on the ground.

A video of the launch shows that the rocket initially took off as expected, with all four of its engines firing properly. But after clearing the launch pad its ascent quickly stalled, and it began to slide sideways before dropping back to the ground and disappearing in a cloud of smoke, likely landing on its side. There was no apparent explosion, but the rocket quickly burst into flames.

Eris-1, which stood at around 82 feet (25 meters) tall, was the first spacecraft fully constructed by an Australian company. This was also the country’s first orbital launch attempt since October 1971, when the U.K. successfully launched a British Black Arrow rocket into space from a spaceport in Southern Australia, according to AP News.

The launch was initially scheduled for March but was pushed back due to adverse weather conditions caused by Cyclone Alfred. It was then scrapped again in mid-May when a piece of its payload “popped off” the rocket on the launch pad, according to Live Science’s sister site Space.com.

Related: Watch a private German rocket explode during 1st orbital launch attempt from European soil (video)

Nobody was hurt during the crash, and there were no “adverse environmental impacts,” according to an emailed statement from Gilmour Space. However, the company has not yet revealed what went wrong.

Despite achieving just 14 seconds of flight time, Gilmour Space representatives claimed that the launch was a major success, describing it as a “big step” and an “awesome result,” in a post on the social platform X. Historically, most maiden private rocket launches fail to clear the launch pad, they added.

“Getting off the pad and into flight is a huge step forward for any new rocket program,” Adam Gilmour, co-founder and CEO of Gilmour Space, said in the statement. “This was the first real test of our rocket systems, our propulsion technology and our spaceport — and it proved that much of what we’ve built works.”

The Eris rockets are designed to launch 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of material into low Earth orbit, which is around 15 times more than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. Their primary payloads will likely be small communications satellites, which are also being developed by Gilmour Space.

It is currently unclear when the next Eris mission is set to launch.