ABOUT US
We are General Astronautics, a 10 year old company. Our team has 24 years of aerospace experience, starting in 1999 as an aerospace non-profit, ARCA Space
We launched our first rocket, Demonstrator 2B, in 2004 from Cape Midia Air Force Base, and since then more private and governmental aerospace programs followed.
The story of the Commercial EcoRocket has it's roots almost 20 years ago, in 2005 when together with the Flight Test and Research Center of the Romanian Air Force we filed a proposal to the Ministry of Research regarding a target rocket derived from the Demonstrator 2B. The target rocket was presented to the Romanian prime-minister of the time, but a couple of months later, the Ministry ran out of funds and the program was cut short before completion. However the experience was then established.
Furthermore, the knowledge and the technology to develop Reentry Vehicles was established in the 2013-2015 timeframe during two contracts with the European Space Agency (ESA), one for the ExoMars high altitude, supersonic drop test vehicle, and another one for the Mars Sample Return rocket powered reentry capsule.
In fact, the Reentry Target Vehicle (RTV) is using the same engine designed by our team for the Mars Sample Return test capsule.
The EcoRocket program on which the Commercial EcoRocket is based on, started at the end of 2020 and is currently going strong.
The CER1200 is in fact based on the Propulsion Module built for the EcoRocket Heavy, the world's heaviest rocket with a launch mass of 5,440 tonnes.
