Last Mission For Skylark Completed

LAUNCH PAD

Image credit: Pressens Bild.

Kiruna, Sweden (SPX) May 03, 2005
Today (Monday) at 05.00 UTC, the Swedish sounding rocket MASER 10 was launched from Swedish Space Corporation's launching facility Esrange, outside Kiruna in the north of Sweden. By that, the British rocket motor Skylark has completed its final mission.

MASER 10 reached an apogee of 252 km and a top speed of approx. 2 km/sec. The experiments onboard spent six minutes in microgravity and worked perfectly during the flight. The payload is now recovered and back at Esrange.

Due to a parachute system failure, the impact was very hard and the payload was damaged.

"However, all indications show that the scientific objectives have been fulfilled. Right now, we are almost certain that the far majority of all scientific samples are intact for further analysis and that the data stored onboard is readable", says Wolfgang Herfs, ESA.

MASER is a Swedish sounding rocket programme for microgravity research managed by SSC on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA).

MASER 10 carried five scientific experiments onboard, two biology experiments and three fluid physics experiments.