The Great Auk (GA) was a flightless bird which is a fitting name for the new dummy 3P pocketqube satellites. They have been developed to replace the dummy pocketqubes that were damaged during the initial functional testing of the Claymore deployer. Their mass are approximately 720g and just like as their name suggest they aren’t intended to go into space.
The GA are fully modular as this allows broken components to be replaced quickly thus minimizing any downtime if something fails. It’s also cheaper to fix than the original dummy satellites as the original was just a single milled parts so if the rail interface of the dummy PQ broke then a replacement would need to be machined. A modular design allows the GA to act as a test bed for future PQ developments such as testing new payloads.
Functional testing of the Claymore has resumed and the results will be published at a later date.
wyrmengineering.com 