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…
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Today an occlusion front passed Kiruna. Why is this interesting? Because today the launch was cancelled because of the weather. Not because it was snowing this morning, but because the sun drove away all the clouds. The weather changed very rapidly and just when we were driving the rocket to the launch tower the winds…
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Today we spent on all those little things which you want to do before a launch but you never have the time for. Today we spent most of the time testing and practicing with the telemetry. Although earlier in the blog we mentioned that our transmitter could send data we still had problems receiving it.…
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The last few days went by very fast, with two balloon launches, two rocket launches and the delay of the Stratos launch. Today was a day of rest and processing the previous 72 hours. Most people spent the day alone or just with two people enjoying the quietness of the almost deserted base. Auke left…
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Today we had the first opportunity to launch the stratos. At 4:00 this morning we started with the preparations. Trying to beat the clock and finish faster then we first estimated. At 12:00 we had the second flight readiness meeting with Esrange. The conclusion of this meeting was that it was not wise to launch.…
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The morning started with a surprise for Mark and Martijn. Esrange needed some extra eyes for the helicopter reconnaissance flight over the impact area before the REXUS 6 launch. Mark and Martijn gladly left their breakfast behind to make use of this kind offer. Two hours after the flight Esrange finally launched the REXUS 6.…
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Since arriving here at Esrange the Stratos team has been waiting for the chance to launch the Stratos rocket, and it looks like that chance will finally come this Friday or Saturday. But there was one other thing that we also had been waiting for: the chance to see Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. The…
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This morning the last connectors were soldered to the Annabel capsule. The wireharness of the Annabel capsule has also been trimmed today. The hardware of the Annabel capsule is now ready to fly. There are two capsules for the Stratos rocket, Annabel en Betty. If the first capsule malfunctions then the whole capsule can be replaced…
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Today most of us skipped breakfast because of the balloon launch early in the morning. After the lunch we had to say goodbye to our teammate Christina. She had to leave for ESA Estect Noordwijk for her interview to get into the ESA traineeship program. We wish her the best of luck. Christina zet hem…
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Not only a daily update this time, but also a nightly update. The TWIN balloon was launched at 05:21:40 this morning. The TWIN balloon is one of two balloons taking part in a balloon launch campaign here at Esrange. Since January the launch had been rescheduled multiple times due to weather conditions, but tonight it finally lifted off. The…
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