07-07-2025
Etlaq set for Duqm-2 suborbital rocket launch
DUQM: Etlaq, the MENA region's first spaceport established at Duqm in the Sultanate of Oman, is preparing for its first experimental rocket launch of the year with the 'Duqm-2' mission. The launch is scheduled sometime between 10 pm on Tuesday and 6 am on Wednesday.
At the heart of the mission is KEA-1, a 12-metre, guided, two-stage suborbital vehicle built by Stellar Kinetics, a New Zealand based vertically integrated orbital rocket manufacturing start-up.
Fuelled by liquid oxygen and propane, the two-tonne KEA-1 will target a 500-kilometre apogee, while demonstrating advanced spaceflight capabilities, such as stage separation and active guidance, while also proving that the rocket can perform under Middle Eastern summer conditions and under tight development timelines.
A key feature of the Duqm-2 launch is its use of hot staging — a technique in which the next stage's engines ignite before the previous stage has fully separated. This contrasts with traditional staging, where the first stage shuts down and detaches before the next stage ignites.
Onboard the mission are a pair of education-centric research payload suites. The first is from UK based Joint Universities Programme for In-Orbit Training, Education and Research (JUPITER), representing a collaboration of the University of Surrey, the University of Portsmouth and the University of Southampton.
The JUPITER payload consists of two satellites: a Jovian-O 6U cube satellite (CubeSat) carrying a prototype deployment system; and an earth observation instrument, DAVE (Dual Aperture for Viewing Earth), which is equipped with two small cameras - one to capture images and videos of Earth, and the other is a space-facing camera to monitor space debris.
The second payload comes from Taiwan-based 'SIGHT Space', a student-founded space education initiative from the National Central University.
SIGHT Space's SIGHT PocketQube II satellite is designed to measure real-time structural stress and environmental data (temperature, pressure, acceleration) during suborbital flight.
It is part of an ongoing effort to build small, accessible satellite platforms for education, research and lightweight spaceflight validation.
Significantly, the latest Duqm-2 mission follows the successful launch of Duqm-1 in December 2024, which marked Oman's entry into space.
Earlier this year, Etlaq officials unveiled that Duqm-3, scheduled for launch in October, will have a more complex launch and operational procedures, while Duqm-4, scheduled during December, will also have different parameters.
The missions are part of the spaceport's recently announced experimental rocket launch initiative, dubbed the Genesis Programme, which aims to develop Oman's space launch culture before full-scale commercial operations in 2027.
