The sounding rocket TEXUS 43 was successfully launched today from the Swedish Space Corporation's (SSC) launch facility Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden. The launch took place at 08.12 (UT) and the rocket provided almost 6 minutes (347 sec) of microgravity time for the 5 experiments on board.
The TEXUS project is a sounding rocket program with the primary aim to investigate the properties and behaviour of materials, chemicals and biological substances in a microgravity environment. The programme is founded by ESA (European Space Agency) and
carried out jointly by EuroLaunch and EADS-ST (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company – Space Transportation). EuroLaunch is a cooperation between SSC and DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt).
"Today we launched the new rocket VSB-30 for the second time and from a safety point of view we are very pleased", says Mr. Stig Kemi, Head of Sounding Rocket and Balloon Department at Esrange. "We have by this launch confirmed that VSB-30 will be an excellent rocket motor for the TEXUS and MASER programmes", Mr. Kemi concludes.
"We had a nominal flight and another perfect recovery of a totally undamaged payload", says Mr. Wolfgang Herfs, project manager for ESA. "It seems that two of the three experiments have worked flawlessly while in the combustion experiment the ignition system unfortunately failed. Overall we have a 60% success as regards the science on the sounding rocket mission", Mr. Herfs concludes.
