ESA flies suborbital rocket from Swedish spaceport
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday successfully flew a small suborbital rocket from the Esrange spaceport in Sweden, completing the sixteenth such flight since 1987.
The rocket reached an altitude of 256 km before falling back to Earth and providing approximately six minutes of microgravity to six scientific experiments onboard.
…All systems performed well during the flight and the valuable payloads were recovered by helicopter soon after landing. Flight samples of the experiments will now be returned for further analysis to science teams from Sweden, Germany and Finland, after more than two years of preparations.
This suborbital launch is only a preliminary of much bigger things to come. The rocket startup Firefly is building a launchpad at Esrange for orbital launches. Furthermore, the European startup MaiaSpace, a subsidary of ArianeGroup, plans to do tests of its partly reusable Maia rocket there in 2025.
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Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
The European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday successfully flew a small suborbital rocket from the Esrange spaceport in Sweden, completing the sixteenth such flight since 1987.
The rocket reached an altitude of 256 km before falling back to Earth and providing approximately six minutes of microgravity to six scientific experiments onboard.
…All systems performed well during the flight and the valuable payloads were recovered by helicopter soon after landing. Flight samples of the experiments will now be returned for further analysis to science teams from Sweden, Germany and Finland, after more than two years of preparations.
This suborbital launch is only a preliminary of much bigger things to come. The rocket startup Firefly is building a launchpad at Esrange for orbital launches. Furthermore, the European startup MaiaSpace, a subsidary of ArianeGroup, plans to do tests of its partly reusable Maia rocket there in 2025.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
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