100 Days till launch

Today (the 24th of June 2014) we are officially 100 days away from the launch of Stratos II! And is was noticable here in Delft, as everyone has been very busy in the last few weeks. Our amounts of updates on the site have been a bit behind due to all the activities, so let me try to give you a quick overview of the two most important things: The unveiling of Stratos II and the visit to the launch site.

Opening of the KorolevLab by Olexander Horin

Opening of the KorolevLab and unveiling of Stratos II

On Thursday the 12th of June DARE opened its new lab at the TU Delft campus: The KorolevLab. This lab is part of the Robotics Institute of Delft University and will be used by DARE as a meeting room and for the construction of electronics. The opening was done by Professor Chris Verhoeven and by the Ukranian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Olexander Horin, who told a number of interesting anecdotes concerning the man Korolev, the Ukranian space engineering after who the lab is named. Sergei Korolev is often named the ‘father of practical rocketry’, something that of course aligns perfectly with the society DARE.

On the same day DARE unveiled the Stratos II rocket to the public. The rocket was put in the launch tower at the TU Delft campus and was unveiled before a large audience of DARE members, DARE alumni, sponsors and TU Delft professors.

Check out all the pictures of the unveiling at the bottom of this article.

Visit to the El Arenosillo launch site

The Stratos II rocket in the sunshine

Three weeks ago, three DARE members visited the El Arenosillo launch site in Spain for one day to investigate and inspect the site and to talk with the site managers concerning the launch campaign of Stratos II. It was a very productive visit and the site is perfect for the launch. More updates on the launch site will follow over the course of the coming weeks.

Also during the visit it became clear that the 2nd of October has been reserved as the prospective launch date for Stratos II. On this date launch windows are available to us. Hopefully more launch windows will be opened up in the days surrounding that date.

This of course means that from this point on an official countdown can be started for the launch campaign: the 2nd of October is 100 days from now.

(Sorry. Our image gallery seems to be not functioning due to WordPress upgrades at the moment. We are working on fixing this.)