Rocketing into space

Piloted space vehicle could soon make suborbital trips

The Citadel Physics Department will host Khaki Rodway of XCOR Aerospace at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in Copeland Auditorium (room 117) in Grimsley Hall.

XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, Calif., is currently developing the Lynx suborbital space vehicle to provide low-cost access to space for payloads and passengers. Rodway will discuss the motivation for developing such a vehicle, the kinds of missions it will support, as well as the vehicle's current status and expected timeline for development.

The event is free and open to the public.

Rodway is XCOR's director of payload sales and operations. She joined XCOR in 2005 as the technical writer and program manager for government contracts, and has since taken on ever increasing responsibilities for working with scientists, engineers and educators who wish to fly projects on the Lynx suborbital launch vehicle.

Rodway has been instrumental in the development of XCOR's "Your Mission. Our Ship" program for customized research and education payload flights in the fields of planetary science, earth observation, microgravity, atmospheric science, medical/biotech, and many other applications. She oversees XCOR's contract with NASA's Flight Opportunities Program and XCOR's commercial-focused Payload Sales Channel, which includes such global payload integration specialists as Southwest Research Institute, Spaceflight Services, Planetary Sciences Institute, Space Expedition Corporation of the Netherlands, and Cosmica Spacelines of Toulouse, France.