The Long Beach, California-based company's 110-foot tall Terran 1 rocket, which is 85 per cent made of 3D-printed parts, lifted off on its debut flight around 11:25 p.m. EDT (03:25 GMT on Thursday) from a launchpad at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Base.
Roughly 80 seconds into the flight at an altitude of nearly 10 miles (16km) above the Atlantic ocean, the rocket reached peak aerodynamic stress as it ascended toward space at 1,242mph (1,999km/h), passing a key objective of the test mission.
Upon reaching space, the rocket's second stage engine appeared to briefly ignite but failed to achieve thrust, ultimately failing to reach orbit.
"While we didn't make it all the way today, we gathered enough data to show that flying 3D-printed rockets is possible," said Arwa Tizani Kelly, Relativity's test program manager, on the company's live video stream.
Relativity's launch was intended to validate the company's supposition...