2023-10-07 11:11:05
Mission accomplished. The first private Spanish rocket successfully took off this Saturday morning. After several postponements, the start-up PLD Space managed to fly its Miura-1 prototype from Andalusia, the first stage of a mini-launcher supposed to bring Spain into the club of space nations.
This inaugural shot, broadcast live, took place at 2:19 a.m. from a military base in the province of Huelva. It took place “successfully” and made it possible to achieve “all the technical objectives” sought, assured the company in a press release.
The tenth Nation with direct space capability
The 2.5-ton rocket rose to its peak 46 kilometers above the Gulf of Cádiz, high enough to move away from the atmosphere but not high enough to orbit the Earth. After five minutes of flight, it finished its journey as expected in the Atlantic, where the company planned to send a team to recover the device. “This launch is the fruit of more than twelve years of work,” underlined the co-founder and CEO of PLD Space, Raul Torres, hailing a “historic” shot. With this flight, “Spain becomes the tenth country in the world to have a direct space capability,” insists the company.
The launch of Miura-1, a 12-meter-high rocket, was suspended for the first time on May 31 due to strong wind gusts at altitude, then a second time on June 17, due to a problem on the one of the energy supply pipes.
An upcoming launch from Kourou
The Miura-1 rocket, which will undergo a second flight, is to serve as the first step in the development of Miura-5, a two-stage, 35-meter-high mini-launch vehicle designed to place satellites of less than 500 kilos, according to PLD Space. Under an agreement signed with the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES), this mini-launcher will take off from the Kourou Space Center, in French Guiana, and no longer from Huelva. According to the company, 70% of the components developed for Miura-1 will be used for Miura-5.
The start-up, which is preparing to scale up to an industrial scale with a factory capable of producing 50 engines per year and a second capable of manufacturing five to six rockets per year, plans two demonstration flights in 2025 and entry into commercial service the next year. In the longer term, the start-up intends to make Miura-5 reusable, by recovering the main stage of the rocket from the ocean, the fall of which will be slowed by a parachute. The company designs these developments with this idea in mind but does not make it a prerequisite.
The race for mini-launchers
Like her, several European start-ups, including the German Isar Aerospace and the French Latitude, have launched into the race for mini space launchers in recent years, in order to respond to the fast-growing market for putting micro -satellites.
Compared to large launchers like the Falcon 9 (SpaceX) or Ariane 6 (ArianeGroup), these small rockets offer flexibility of use: carrying a single satellite, they can be fired quickly to respond to an urgent need, replace a failing satellite or complete a constellation.
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