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 our website. We were amazed by all the congratulations we got from people all over Europe ranging from friends and family till fellow rocket enthusiasts.

For the moment the search for the capsule stopped. The last coordinates obtained from the capsule are in heavily forested and steep terrain. When the snow is melted Esrange will attempt a second try to recover the capsule. We know that the capsule landed with 250 m/s. This means that the parachute did not deploy. We have some good theories about why this happened and how we can solve this but this is only speculation as long as we do not get the SD cards with the data.

From the data we have we suspect that we went higher then 12.5 km. The capsule will provide us with more certainty if this suspicion is correct.

Instalation of the booster. picture by SSE/Esrange

The Capsule with flightcomputer and payload. Picture by SSE/Esrange

Placing the capsule on top of the Sustainer. Picture by SSE/Esrange

Installing the Sustainer on top of the booster. Picture by SSE/Esrange

Installing the Sustainer on top of the Booster. Picture by SSE/Esrange

The Stratos ready for launch. Picture by SSE/Esrange

Launch of Stratos. Picture by SSE/Esrange