Stratos I
Stratos I was the first rocket in the Stratos project. First ideas about a two stage rocket that would break the European altitude record started in early 2006. Then 2006 and 2007 were devoted to design. In 2008 the production phase started and on 17 March 2009 the rocket was finally launched at Esrange Space Center, a professional rocket base in Kiruna, Sweden, located 200 km above the polar circle and reach the record altitude of 12.3 km.
In the last stages of the project a weblog was kept, with some amazing pictures can be found here.
Background
Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE) was founded as part of the student association ‘VSV Leonardo DaVinci’ at the faculty of aerospace engineering at the University of Technology Delft. Started by a small group of 6 enthusiastic students, DARE grew over the years to a group of 40 students. DARE participated in the Dutch CanSat competition, delivering the rockets. On a demonstration for CanSat at the IAC Valencia in 2006 DARE set their own personal altitude record to almost 2 km.
In 2006 DARE decided to aim for improving its own record with a factor 6 to 12 km, thereby also aiming to break the European altitude record for amateur rockets, which was then held by the English society MARS and set to 10.7 km.
Technology
The Stratos rocket consisted of two stages. The first stage consisted of four booster motors, each with a thrust of 1.5 kN or 150 kg, which propelled the rocket close to the speed of sound at about a kilometer altitude. After burnout, the boosters were jettisoned and the main stage started bringing the rocket in 10 seconds to unreached heights with a velocity of thrice the speed of sound, Mach 3, 3000 km/h. After a coasting phase the rocket eventually reached its apogee at 12.3 km.
Originally planned was to have a large part of the rocket not recovered, but all the valuable data, electronics and payload experiments to be separated from the main stage and safely landed by parachute. The flight computers also had a wireless data downlink for telemetry, ensuring complete evaluation of the flight, even if the electronics capsule was not to be found.
A payload containing an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) from the TU Delft was also carried. The IMU had been developed by aerospace students at the TU Delft for the Design Synthesis Exercise and was built and flown in Stratos.
Unfortunately the intended separation of the flight computer and payload module from the main stage did not occur: due to extremely low air pressure the pyro charge which would cause the separation was unable to be fired. This had as consequence that the parachute could not deploy and that the rocket impacted the ground after a 12 km free fall.
Later a rescue mission was setup to recover the remains of the rocket. Read more about this here.
Launch campaign
The launch campaign occurred at Esrange, a professional rocket base in Kiruna, Sweden, 200 km above the polar circle. During the launch campaign the team kept a day-to-day weblog, which can be found here. On this weblog also many pictures can be found.
Sponsors
The presenting sponsor for Stratos I was Dutch Space. Executing sponsors were the TU Delft and Swedish Space Corporation. Participating sponsors were Rebel Space, VSV Leonardo DaVinci, Inducar, Caveman Rocketry and NXP Semiconductors.
