Watch a space startup spin a projectile into the sky at more than 1,000 miles per hour

SpinLaunch, an ambitious startup that hopes to spin, rather than launch, satellites into orbit, released dizzying footage of a test flight that the company conducted out of New Mexico.

The test flight last month, which marked the company's eighth since October 2021, was the first to include an on-board camera. It offered views of the projectile as it soared more than 25,000 feet above ground after being spun around in a vacuum-sealed centrifuge to more than 1,000 miles per hour. The video, shared by SpinLaunch in late April, shows the New Mexican desert shrinking and spinning as the twisting test vehicle soars higher above the ground.

Eventually, SpinLaunch hopes to conduct flights that go much higher and faster than the tests it's conducted so far. As impressive as it may be to spin an object faster than the speed of sound and then catapult it upward, to put satellites into orbit, objects have to travel to more than 17,000 miles per hour, or roughly 17 times faster than its test flights thus far.