Dawn Aerospace, a startup developing a commercial suborbital aircraft, announced on May 22, 2025, that it is now accepting orders for its ‘Aurora’ spaceplane.
The unmanned ‘Aurora’ blends characteristics of a conventional aircraft and a spaceplane.
It takes off and lands on regular runways and it can fly several missions per day, but ‘Aurora’ will also be capable of flying at very high speeds (of up to Mach 3.5 km/h) and of reaching suborbital altitudes beyond the Karman line (the 100 km / 328,000 ft altitude threshold where it is commonly accepted that space begins).
In the press release announcing the opening of its order book, Dawn Aerospace stated that it expects commercial deliveries of the ‘Aurora’ to start in 2027.
The company claims that this is the first time in history that a space-capable aircraft of any sort has been made available on the market to end customers. The company’s business model envisages private operators purchasing the aircraft and conducting their own suborbital operations independently.
In November 2024, the ‘Aurora’ breached the sound barrier and achieved a top speed of Mach 1.2 during a flight test in New Zealand. On that same flight, ‘Aurora’ set also a new record for the fastest climb beyond 20,000 meters of altitude (it flew as high as 25.1 km / 82,500 feet).
Once ready in its final form, the ‘Aurora’ will be able to conduct missions in which conditions of zero gravity are sustained for several minutes. With this performance, Dawn Aerospace expects to attract interest from military and industrial operators, since some processes, for example in health sciences and microchip-making, are better conducted in the absence of gravity.
AeroTime has reached out to Dawn Aerospace for further comment.
