Radian Aerospace is an American
aerospace company
An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry.
...
based in
Seattle, Washington
Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...
. The company is developing a horizontal take-off/horizontal landing,
single-stage-to-orbit
A single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle reaches orbit from the surface of a body using only propellants and fluids and without expending tanks, engines, or other major hardware. The term usually, but not exclusively refers to reusable launch sys ...
, fully reusable
spaceplane
A spaceplane is a vehicle that can flight, fly and gliding flight, glide as an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and function as a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbit ...
concept called Radian One.
History
Radian was founded in 2016. In January 2022, the company closed a $27.5 million seed round led by venture capital fund Fine Structure Ventures.
In September 2024, Radian Aerospace completed ground tests of its subscale prototype flight vehicle called PFV01 in
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The city is the seat of the Abu Dhabi Central Capital District, the capital city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the UAE's List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, second-most popu ...
and begins flight tests.
Radian One
Radian released their latest vehicle design of Radian One to the public in April 2024.
Radian One is designed to carry up to five crew members to
low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...
, with as much as 5,000 pounds of payload going up and 10,000 pounds going down. The
delta-winged plane will be
launched from a rocket-powered sled. Radian claims it will be able to land on any runway and fly again in 48 hours.
Target markets
The company is focusing on research,
space manufacturing
Space manufacturing or In-space manufacturing (ISM in short) is the fabrication, assembly or integration of tangible goods beyond Earth's atmosphere (or more generally, outside a planetary atmosphere), involving the transformation of raw or re ...
, terrestrial observation, and rapid global delivery to Earth destinations. Radian has penned launch agreements with governments and commercial firms.
See also
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Commercialization of space
Space economy refers to the set of activities, industries, technologies, services, and resources that generate economic value through the space exploration, understanding, management, and exploitation of outer space.
Commercial satellite us ...
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Private spaceflight
Private spaceflight is any spaceflight development that is not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA.
During the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pionee ...
References
External links
Official Website
Aerospace companies of the United States
Private spaceflight companies
Companies based in Seattle
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