The University of Queensland was not at fault in the failed launch of the SCRAMSPACE rocket, according to the group that ran the range.

The Andøya Rocket Range has released a statement confirming that the University did its job admirably on the SCRAMSPACE project, and was not responsible for last week's launch failure in Norway.

“The range can confirm that the SCRAMSPACE payload functioned as it should, and was in no way connected with the failure of the rocket,” the statement said.

The “payload” was the SCRAMSPACE scramjet. The launch was designed to lift the scramjet to an altitude of 300km before releasing it, but the rockets carried it only about 5km up before plunging into the sea.

SCRAMSPACE Director and University of Queensland Hypersonics Professor Russell Boyce said the launch was the final part of a multi-year project that had achieved much of what it set out to do.

The University of Queensland says the SCRAMSPACE launch failure will not have any impact on other hypersonics research under way at their Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology.