Rocket launches from Australia
Australia has five launch sites, one home-built orbital rocket, and the first orbital launch attempt from its own soil in over half a century. This is what is flying, from where, and what happens next — kept current alongside the live launch board.
Eris — Australia's orbital rocket
Built by Gilmour Space Technologies on the Gold Coast, Eris is the only Australian-designed orbital launch vehicle, and unusual worldwide for using hybrid rocket motors — solid fuel with a liquid oxidiser, which is simpler and safer than a liquid engine but harder to get performance from.
| First flight | 29 July 2025, Bowen Orbital Spaceport, Queensland. The first Australian-made orbital rocket ever launched from Australian soil, and the first orbital launch attempt from Australian territory since October 1971. |
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| What happened | The vehicle began sliding sideways shortly after lifting off and impacted the ground about 14 seconds into flight. Nobody was hurt and Gilmour reported no adverse environmental effects. Reaching the pad at all put Australia in a very short list of countries that have attempted a domestically built orbital launch. |
| Next flight | TestFlight 2, expected late 2026. Gilmour has also said it intends to fly a suborbital hypersonic test first, subject to approvals, with the orbital attempt following that. |
| Specifications | 25 m tall, 2 m diameter, three stages, about 305 kg to low Earth orbit. Full specifications → |
Eris has not yet reached orbit. Australia has therefore not yet launched its own satellite on its own rocket from its own territory — a distinction worth stating plainly, because it is the thing TestFlight 2 is trying to change.
Australian launch sites
Five sites, only one of them orbital today. Australia's geographic advantages are real and specific: enormous empty ranges, a southern coastline that suits polar orbits, and in Arnhem Land a site closer to the equator than almost anywhere in the developed world.
Bowen Orbital Spaceport
Australia's only orbital launch site, privately built by Gilmour on the north Queensland coast near Abbot Point. Eris flew from here in July 2025 — the first Australian-made orbital rocket ever launched from Australian soil.
Koonibba Test Range
On Koonibba Community land on the far west coast, operated in partnership with the Koonibba Community Aboriginal Corporation. Used for suborbital and rocket-recovery testing, with a very large uninhabited downrange area.
Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex
On the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula. Its value is geographic: an unobstructed southward range over the Southern Ocean, which is exactly what polar and sun-synchronous orbits need and what most of the world's spaceports cannot offer.
Arnhem Space Centre
Near Nhulunbuy on Gumatj land in East Arnhem. NASA flew sounding rockets from here in 2022 — the first NASA launches from a commercial spaceport outside the United States. Twelve degrees south, so unusually close to the equator.
Woomera Range Complex
One of the largest land testing ranges on Earth and the site of every Australian orbital launch before 2025. WRESAT went up from here in 1967 and Britain's Prospero in 1971; nothing reached orbit from Australia in the fifty-four years that followed.
Australia in orbit — the short history
| 29 November 1967 | WRESAT. Australia's first satellite, launched from Woomera on a surplus American Sparta rocket, making Australia one of the first handful of nations with a satellite of its own in orbit. |
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| 28 October 1971 | Prospero. Britain's Black Arrow lifted a British satellite from Woomera — the only British satellite ever launched by a British rocket, and the last orbital launch from Australia for fifty-four years. |
| 29 July 2025 | Eris TestFlight 1. The first Australian-built orbital rocket to leave an Australian pad. It did not reach orbit. |
Watching a launch from Australia
Most launches worth watching happen overseas and at inconvenient hours. The launch board shows every launch worldwide in your own local time with a live countdown, and carries the webcast where one can be embedded. Filter it to a country from the menu in the top corner to see only that nation's flights.