Stratos II

Introduction

Stratos II is a two staged rocket. Each stage has an identical propulsion system to minimize the development costs and time. Two propulsion concepts are currently being investigated, a solid rocket motor and a hybrid rocket motor. The most likely concept will use two solid rocket motors loaded with 75 kg of low-environmental impact propellant, producing 15kN of thrust.

The rocket will contain a fully recoverable, 12 kg scientific payload capsule, equipped with 12 scientific payload bays, in house developed flight computer, S-band telemetry, 360 degree radio-transparent aerodynamic nose cone and a fully electro-mechanical separation & recovery system.

Mission overview

After ignition the Stratos II rocket will leave the launch tower with almost 100 km/h. After 10 seconds the first stage motor burns out and automatically separates the empty motor. Leaving the thick layers of the atmosphere behind, five seconds later the second stage motor is ignited.

With only thin air surrounding the rocket it will reach a speed of almost 5000 km/h.  While flying higher and higher gravity will reduce the speed to zero. At this point, apogee, the highest point of the trajectory, the rocket flies 50 km above the Earth. This is a place where it is too high for airplanes to fly and too low for satellites to orbit.

After apogee the rocket will return to Earth. After a ballistic descent phase, at 10 km altitude the nose cone with all the valuable data and payloads will be separated from the rest of the rocket. At 2 km altitude the parachute will be deployed, making sure the nose cone lands softly.

The nose cone keeps transmitting its location until a recovery crew finds the package.

Sponsor information

More information on the project and how to support us can be found in the sponsor brochure.

Dawn flight engine ready to go

On Thursday the 3th of May 2012, the hybrid propulsion team of the Stratos II project (named Dawn) successfully tested their flight engine. This hybrid rocket engine has been developed based on the research they have done during the whole span of the project. Now finally they are ready to go for the first attempt in the history of DARE to launch a hybrid rocket engine. The team has kept to their original design of an engine with a sorbitol fuel grain and a nitrous oxide oxidizer. To store the oxidizer the tank concept developed during the Spacecraft Engineering Minor [...]