Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

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2009 Archived News by Swedish Space Corporation

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Today, at 10:28 UTC, the student rocket Stratos was launched from Esrange Space Center. The rocket, an amateur rocket developed by students from the Delft University of Technology in Holland, reached an altitude of 12551 m. This is from now on considered as the new official record for European amateur rockets. The record was earlier held by the British amateur rocket society MARS, which launched a rocket to 10.7 km from Black Rock Desert in USA in 2000.

SLIDESHOW: Photos of the prep and launch of Stratos.

The Launch of STRATOS March 17 at 10:28 UTC.

Our rocket performed like a dream. Everything worked as planned, the two rocket stages ignited nominally and the impact was within the safety area, says Mark Uitendaal, the Stratos project leader writing his thesis on this project.

It is great to have the opportunity as a student team to launch our own rocket from the profession launch area at Esrange Space Center. The learning experience of working together with the experts in the field of rocketry is priceless, says Ragiel Wildvank and Jasper de Reus, students in the Stratos team.

Student association DARE
Stratos has been developed by a team of students from the faculty of Electrical and Aerospace Engineering, all members of the student association Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE). The purpose of the association is to involve students in the designing and launching of experimental rockets. Dutch Space, a space company located in Leiden, is the principle sponsor of project Stratos.

Website: http://www.projectstratos.nl/index.php

For further information contact:
Ola Widell, Stratos/DARE project manager at Esrange, SSC
Phone: +46 980 720 31
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Reader comments:

#1 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Impact was in the recovery area? I wonder that means...

Dipstick on 03-17-2009 11:50 AM

#2 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Quote:

Impact was in the recovery area? I wonder that means...

Ballistic recovery??

Rocketflyer on 03-17-2009 03:41 PM

#3 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

It states on their website that most of the rocket was designed not to be recovered. The electronics package was ejected and came back on a chute. I assume the rest of the rocket core sampled somewhere!

GDiener on 03-17-2009 04:03 PM

#4 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

What a great project! Love that 4 motor booster. The video is nice, but one wonders why they had to drop so much rocket along the way. Why not keep those parts? If only for post flight analysis.

Any better info on the Motor sizes? Looks something like 4x M motors staged to an O. Or perhaps somewhat less.

New Ocean on 03-17-2009 04:23 PM

#5 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Quote:

one wonders why they had to drop so much rocket along the way. Why not keep those parts? If only for post flight analysis.

To recover those parts requires more weight for recovery components. Discarding them allows greater altitude, less complexity, and less budget.

Steve_Shannon on 03-17-2009 11:55 PM

#6 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Unless they want to fly again that is...

New Ocean on 03-20-2009 02:06 PM

#7 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Quote:

Unless they want to fly again that is...

But they didn't.

Even so they can drop off sections with smaller recovery systems for each (tumble recovery even), just as staged rockets are done all the time in HPR.

Steve_Shannon on 03-20-2009 05:17 PM

#8 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Quote:

Even so they can drop off sections with smaller recovery systems for each (tumble recovery even), just as staged rockets are done all the time in HPR.

But they didnt .

New Ocean on 03-20-2009 07:54 PM

#9 Re: Article: Record amateur rocket from Swedish Esrange Space Center

Quote:

The first stage were 4 L motors and second stage was an N motor.

Unfortunately the parachute didn't eject, the electronics bay crashed with a speed of about 210 m/s.
But it's still possible the SD card is still intact, we searched for it right after launch, but we couldn't find it because it landed in a hilly and heavily forested terrain. Maybe we will look for it again during the summer when the terrain is more accessible.

There were no recovery systems for the rest of the rocket to save weight. It would have been interesting for post flight analysis, but as with the electronics bay, recovery would have been difficult and costly.

Next time we will just built a bigger rocket, probably with a liquid upperstage, which will be expensive enough to be worth recovering