Martlet III’s History

Martle III was a two-stage boosted dart style rocket designed to reach 11km flying an entirely custom avionics package. It launched in September 2017 in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. Weighing 40kg on the pad, with a rocket motor designed to produce an average thrust of 3.4kN for 6.2 seconds, Martlet III reached a max velocity of Mach 1.2. Unfortunately, the only off-the shelf component, the rocket motor, exploded several seconds into the burn. The first stage was destroyed in the explosion, but the dart rode the shockwave of the blast to fly in a stable trajectory to 3.5km. Our avionics went far beyond the call of duty, surviving the explosion with live telemetry through the flight and parachute deployment for safe recovery of the dart.

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