The Spanish Miura 1 rocket has passed the last tests before its expected launch. The exact date of takeoff of the suborbital microlauncher, which has accumulated two failed attempts behind it in May and June, will not be known until 24 hours prior to it. The ship will take off from the facilities of the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center (CEDEA) of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), in Huelva, between October and November.
The company PLD Space, developer of the rocket, has successfully completed the two pre-launch tests: the umbilical connection tests and a complete propellant test. The first consists of checking that the cables that connect the rocket to the launch pad are properly released, and the second is to carry out all the preparation steps prior to starting the engine.
The success in both tests gives the green light to the third attempt of the long-awaited launch of Miura 1, the first private rocket developed in Spain. The device is designed to carry payloads into space and return them safely to the ground, and its flight is planned as a test to collect information for its older brother, the Miura 5, an orbital launcher whose commercial activity is scheduled to begin in 2025. .
The company has reserved launch windows in October and November from the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center (CEDEA), in Huelva, but the exact date and time of takeoff will not be known until about 24 hours before the flight. They assure, however, that they will publicly communicate the scheduled day and time once agreed. Even with the time set, it is not ruled out that changes in weather conditions or technical anomalies could cause a new abortion.
Even during the flight, which is expected to last about 12 minutes, the entity has prepared various scenarios that contemplate changes in the trajectory or poor behavior of some of the systems.
“The success rate of a first launch in the industry is approximately 45%,” concludes Ezequiel Sánchez, executive president of PLD Space.
More than three months ago, on June 27, PLD Space, the company that developed the Miura 1 rocket, announced that it was stopping launch attempts until at least September. The risk of fires and high temperatures made it impossible to attempt a safe takeoff. The break came after two frustrated attempts on May 31 and June 17. The first, due to an unexpected change in the wind at altitude, and the second due to an automatic abort 0.2 seconds before launch.
The company has taken advantage of the summer break to analyze what went wrong in the last attempt. The investigation has revealed that one of the cables that connect the rocket to the launch pad – the so-called umbilical cables – came loose a tenth of a second later than expected, because the rocket was one degree more inclined than it should have been. . The automatic safety system interpreted that the cable had not been released and sent the order to stop the launch, as explained by PLD Space on its website.
“If the cable is less tensioned than expected, the pulling time is longer because the system [does not] only have to pull the connector, but must first tension the cable and the margin of error was very small,” he explains in the notes the Launch Director and co-founder of PLD Space, Raúl Torres. “The engine works until it is told not to work and in this case it was the ground software that sent that command not to continue with the launch because it understood that the umbilicals were still connected.”
The correct separation of these cables has been, precisely, one of the tests that Miura 1 has passed in recent days to get the green light for its launch.
