On the 17th of March we broke the European altitude record for sounding rockets. Today we are still record holders. To celebrate the second anniversary of this event we will organize a lecture on the 17th of March about Stratos I and how we intend to secure our position as lead rocket building society with the development of Stratos II.

If you are interested in hearing about how our student society is on its way half way to space, you are invited to attend this lecture. The lecture will take place in the faculty of Electrical Engineering (EWI) in lecture room A and will start at 20:00.

This article was originally published in the TU Delta and written by Olga Motsyk.

Ever wonder what would happen if you launched your computer to an altitude of 12,5 kilometres, then impacted it with the ground at a speed of 230 meters per second, then left it in thawing snow and dirt for half a year, and then tried to extract data from it?

This is exactly what the Stratos team tried to do this month – to find and then extract data from two data cards stored inside the rocket that has been launched earlier this year on March 17, 2009.
A GPS system on board the Stratos rocket transmitted the altitude and impact site coordinates to a telemetry station on the ground. Immediately after the launch, a recovery team was dispatched to the transmitted coordinates to search for Stratos.

Unfortunately, at that time, the team failed to find the rocket, owing to the huge amounts of snow and the difficult terrain at the impact site.
Two weeks ago – some six months after the launch – a recovery team, led by Stratos project leader, Mark Uitendaal, and safety officer, Hein Olthof, returned to the impact site in order to once again try to recover the remains of the rocket. The main reason for this operation was the valuable flight data stored on the two Secure Digital (SD) cards in the electronics and payload modules of the rocket: there had been strong convictions among some of the team members that the actual maximum altitude was higher than that transmitted by the onboard GPS, and the flight data could confirm this theory.

Stratos’ impact coordinates, obtained from the telemetry transmissions, were located approximately 16 kilometres from the launch site. Since no other means of transportation were available, this distance had to be covered on foot. The recovery team was forced to hike through rough, bushy terrain, cross two rivers (one by boat and the other on foot), a swampy area, and thick woods – all in the name of science!
Finally, on the second day of their quest, the team discovered the Stratos remains just 41 meters from the coordinates last transmitted by the rocket before impact.

Back at TU Delft, the recovered remains were then dissected to retrieve the SD cards, from which it was hoped that some flight data could be extracted. One of the SD cards was completely obliterated, and while the other card initially showed signs of promise, as it was battered but still mostly in one piece, it soon became depressingly apparent that any data stored on this card was also lost.

Although no data was extracted from the electronics module, this recovery did constitute an important milestone: it concluded the final chapter in the Stratos book of rocket history. Dare is now ready to launch new and exciting projects and reach higher and higher altitudes.

On Tuesday afternoon, DARE was given a place on the wall of fame of the faculty of Aerospace Engineering for its accomplishment with the Stratos project.

Disguised as a post flight meeting, the Stratos team members were invited to the faculty, where they found out that the “post flight meeting” was actually a celebration for breaking the European altitude record. Dean Jacco Hoekstra, Rector Magnificus Jacob Fokkema and CEO of Dutch Space Bart Reijnen congratulated the Stratos team and team leader Mark in special with what they called a magnificent achievement. Dean Hoekstra said that he hoped that after the “Nuna effect” the faculty of Aerospace Engineering and the TU Delft as a whole would profit from a “Stratos effect” which shows high school students that on TU Delft it is possible to achieve your dreams.

The wall of fame is a wall on the faculty of Aerospace Engineering directly after the entrance in the main hall where exceptional achievements by Aerospace students and employees are commemorated. As of today Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering is present on this wall with Stratos.

Also, a picture from the flight:

After the success of yesterday most people of Stratos team flew back to the Netherlands. Mark, Hein and Eric cleaned up the last traces of our visit to Esrange and will visit the Northern Cape and then drive back to Holland. Today new pictures and videos were send to us and are now available on our website. We were amazed by all the congratulations we got from people all over Europe ranging from friends and family till fellow rocket enthusiasts.

For the moment the search for the capsule stopped. The last coordinates obtained from the capsule are in heavily forested and steep terrain. When the snow is melted Esrange will attempt a second try to recover the capsule. We know that the capsule landed with 250 m/s. This means that the parachute did not deploy. We have some good theories about why this happened and how we can solve this but this is only speculation as long as we do not get the SD cards with the data.

From the data we have we suspect that we went higher then 12.5 km. The capsule will provide us with more certainty if this suspicion is correct.

The Stratos rocket was succesfully launched today at 11:28 CET from Esrange Space Center reaching an altitude of 12.55 kilometers, thereby breaking the European altitude record for amateur experimental rockets! Esrange Space Center has confirmed the altitude.

This morning we woke up early to start the final preparations for the launch. At 8:30 it was decided that the as soon as the rocket was assembled the countdown was started. At 10:28 that moment had arrived and the countdown started at T-1 hour. After a nerve wrecking hour at 11:28 the boosters were ignited. After 1.5 s the Stratos left the launch pad and few seconds later the boosters burnt out. The second mile stone was the ignition of the sustainer which happened 4.8 seconds later and was withnessed both by the onboard telemetry and visually from the radar dome and the observation station at radar hill.

Then Stratos reached its apogee. The onboard GPS receiver confirmed an altitude of 12.55 km.

After apogee the telemetry received signals that the parachutes were deployed. By that time though the rocket could no longer be tracked visually. Finally the rocket supposely landed in the Swedish snow. A recovery team was sent out on snow scooters but were thus far not able to find the remains of the rocket. The last signals were received when Stratos disappeared behind a mountain range.

Thus after an almost two years long project the objective of breaking the European altitude record was matched and we hope that we have set a new limit in amateur rocketry.

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Hybrid propulsion update

In the past few months the hybrid propulsion group has been working along with other fellow students in a minor at the TU Delft. A minor is a semester during which students can choose to specialize in a field or discover new areas non-related to their field of study. The minor not only allowed more students to discover rocketry but to get closer to a flight ready design. One significant improvement was the design of a vertical test bench with reduced friction and restrains movement in the vertical direction thus allowing for more accurate data gathering and analysis. Further integration [...]