2023-06-17 03:16:35
The cause, on this occasion, was an “abort” when the engine started, the causes of which are being analysed, although the team considers it “a success” to have reached that point.
The launch of the Miura 1, the rocket designed and built by the Elche company PLD Space, from the Mdano del Loro military base, in Moguer (Huelva) has been aborted again this morning for the second time during engine ignition for reasons that are being analyzed.
After the mission had to be aborted in the final phase on May 31st due to strong gusts of high-altitude winds that did not guarantee safety, this morning, although it has gone further in the process, it has not been able to be completed either.
The company communicated this Friday afternoon the scheduled time for this second attempt, after the last meteorological sounding balloon launched at 2:00 p.m. confirmed that the weather conditions and the mission’s flight safety study were favourable.
As they have communicated through the streaming broadcast, Sara Poveda, first employee of PLD Space; and Roberto Palacios, systems engineer of MIURA 5 -the reusable suborbital rocket that is intended to be launched in 2025 from French Guiana-, the cause, on this occasion, has been an “abort” at the moment of engine ignition whose causes are being analyzed, although the team considers “a success” to have reached this point.
The launch was coordinated from the El Arenosillo Experiment Center of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), a nearby facility where the rocket has been since April.
The chronology, a rather long and complex process, began on Friday afternoon and shortly before 2:26 a.m. the “go on go” began, a “crucial” moment of the chronology in which it is verified that the different subsystems of the rocket, as well as the launch base and the meteorology are in optimum condition.
On this occasion, if the green light has been received from all the subsystems and the countdown has even been completed in full, although at 2:43, just as the engine started, the mission was aborted.
In this way, the company seeks a new release window to carry out this first test of the return of the Miura 1, the technological demonstrator that will serve as the basis for the Miura 5.
The flight is expected to have a duration of 6 minutes in which microgravity and apogee conditions have been reached at 80 kilometers high; finally, a team from PLD Space will be in charge of collecting the rocket in the Atlantic Ocean once the splashdown has been completed.
We will have to keep waiting to see the Miura 1, named after the brave cattle breeder and as a symbol of the Spanish brand, become the first 100% Spanish private rocket to go into space, and, with it, value the work that was done there. 2011 began in Elche (Alicante) the engineersRal Torres and Ral Verdwith 3,000 euros which today translates into three offices and more than 130 employees.
This first flight has as main objective check the operation of key technologies in flight, something that to date has not been possible to perform: The thrust profile of the engine under flight conditions, the aerodynamic behavior of the launcher, the nominal trajectory following, the nominal behavior of all subsystems under real conditions and exposure to conditions. real space.
This will allow “gathering the greatest volume of information possible for the validation and design of the technology that will later be transferred and integrated into Miura 5”; In addition, the mission will enable the ZARM Research Institute to study microgravity conditions, collecting information necessary to carry out scientific experiments in future suborbital flights.
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