* Astronomy

The sounding rocket Maxus 7 was successfully launched from the Swedish Space Corporation’s (SSC) launch facility at Esrange Space Centre this morning at 06:16 UT and reached an apogee of 702 km which enabled 12 minutes of microgravity.

The payload consists of five individual experiment modules all developed by EADS-ST. Four of the experiments are a continuation of research performed on previous sounding rocket flights from Esrange and one is newly developed. Two experiments are biological, two concern the solidification process of technically relevant metallic alloys and one deals with fundamental physics.
Both the technical systems and all five experiments performed as planned. The biological samples were recovered by helicopter within one hour and 25 minutes after launch as expected, as they require to be taken care of very quickly after launch. The scientists are now looking forward to some exciting analysis of the data.


Watch launch video

The next rocket campaign at Esrange has already started. Texus 43 will be launched on 8 May, providing new experiments with microgravity for approximately 7 minutes.

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