Aerobrakes — Lesson 11: Regulatory & Safety Clearance

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Phase 3 moves from simulation into real hardware — and real hardware means real regulatory and safety obligations that have to be settled before any build work targets an actual flight.

Objective: the team confirms every regulatory and certification requirement before Phase 3 build work proceeds toward flight testing.

Session Activities

Determine the NAR or TRA certification level required to reach the target altitude, and identify who on the team — or which mentor — actually holds that certification. Then identify any launch waiver requirements at the intended launch site and altitude, and any FAA notification requirements that apply.

Checkpoint

The team cannot proceed to Lesson 16 (Flight Testing) until this session's findings are fully documented in the notebook and confirmed with the mentor. This is a hard gate, not a formality — everything from Lesson 12 onward assumes this clearance is already settled.

Maps to milestone P3-M0. This milestone and lesson were added to the course after a review identified a gap: no safety or regulatory checkpoint existed anywhere before real flight testing of a system with in-flight-actuated surfaces.