This article was originally published in the TU Delta and written by Olga Motsyk.

Ever wonder what would happen if you launched your computer to an altitude of 12,5 kilometres, then impacted it with the ground at a speed of 230 meters per second, then left it in thawing snow and dirt for half a year, and then tried to extract data from it?

The data on this ‘good’ SD card was also destroyed on impact.

This is exactly what the Stratos team tried to do this month – to find and then extract data from two data cards stored inside the rocket that has been launched earlier this year on March 17, 2009.
A GPS system on board the Stratos rocket transmitted the altitude and impact site coordinates to a telemetry station on the ground. Immediately after the launch, a recovery team was dispatched to the transmitted coordinates to search for Stratos.

Unfortunately, at that time, the team failed to find the rocket, owing to the huge amounts of snow and the difficult terrain at the impact site.
Two weeks ago – some six months after the launch – a recovery team, led by Stratos project leader, Mark Uitendaal, and safety officer, Hein Olthof, returned to the impact site in order to once again try to recover the remains of the rocket. The main reason for this operation was the valuable flight data stored on the two Secure Digital (SD) cards in the electronics and payload modules of the rocket: there had been strong convictions among some of the team members that the actual maximum altitude was higher than that transmitted by the onboard GPS, and the flight data could confirm this theory.

Stratos’ impact coordinates, obtained from the telemetry transmissions, were located approximately 16 kilometres from the launch site. Since no other means of transportation were available, this distance had to be covered on foot. The recovery team was forced to hike through rough, bushy terrain, cross two rivers (one by boat and the other on foot), a swampy area, and thick woods – all in the name of science!
Finally, on the second day of their quest, the team discovered the Stratos remains just 41 meters from the coordinates last transmitted by the rocket before impact.

Back at TU Delft, the recovered remains were then dissected to retrieve the SD cards, from which it was hoped that some flight data could be extracted. One of the SD cards was completely obliterated, and while the other card initially showed signs of promise, as it was battered but still mostly in one piece, it soon became depressingly apparent that any data stored on this card was also lost.

Although no data was extracted from the electronics module, this recovery did constitute an important milestone: it concluded the final chapter in the Stratos book of rocket history. Dare is now ready to launch new and exciting projects and reach higher and higher altitudes.