On the third shot it didn't fail. The Spanish rocket Miura 1, the first in Europe developed by a private company, took off successfully yesterday at 2.20 am from the base of El Arenosillo, in the province of Huelva. With this launch, Spain becomes the tenth country in the world with the capacity to put space missions into orbit, reported the company PLD Space, which developed the rocket.
The first two attempts to launch the Miura 1 had to be suspended at the end of spring, in one case due to weather, and in the other, for technical reasons.
The mission, which had an expected duration of twelve minutes, ended when the ship moored in Atlantic waters off the coast of Andalusia, where two ships and a team of divers specializing in underwater operations moved to recover device
The Miura 1, 12.5 meters tall and weighing around 2,600 kilos, reached a height of around 47 kilometers before starting the descent maneuver. Although it did not reach the 80 kilometers altitude established in the initial plan, the launch is considered a success, as the rocket took off without mishap and was able to complete all phases of the mission. The descent included the use of various aerodynamic brake systems and parachutes
Completing the mission will provide valuable data for the development of the future Miura 5, which will be bigger and more powerful. The Miura 1 launched yesterday has been developed as part of PLD Space's learning process with the aim of developing the Miura 5, which will be the one to offer a commercial satellite launch service.
The Miura 5, which will be about 30 meters high and 1.8 meters in diameter, will have the capacity to place loads of about 300 kilos in orbits at an altitude of 500 kilometers. Its first launch could take place in 2024 or 2025, Space .com reported yesterday.
The company PLD Space has already closed an agreement with the National Center for Space Studies of France (CNES) to launch the Miura 5 rockets from the Guyana space base in the future.
"We have made history", said yesterday Raúl Torres, co-founder, CEO and flight director of PLD Space. "The vehicle has behaved perfectly, all the systems have behaved as they should, and we have reached the mission we had as a reference".
The feat of PLD Space was celebrated by Pedro Sánchez, president of the Spanish Government, who wrote on the X social network that "the launch of the Miura 1, the first rocket with 100% Spanish technology, has been a success. A milestone that places Spain's RDI at the forefront of space transport".
Also Juan Manuel Moreno, president of Andalusia, added to the praise for PLD Space with a message to X: "A pride that
Raúl Torres recalled after the launch that the company, founded in Elche in 2011, has experienced complicated times. "It has been a very difficult path, both developing the rocket and above all finding the financing", he declared. "We believe that from now on, finding financing will be simpler; we have shown everything we could do with a team of 150 people, with 65 million euros, but this is only the beginning".
The main objective of the mission was for the Miura 1 to spend as much time as possible in the air, so that it would be possible to obtain as much data as possible with the idea of validating the design and technology developed, and finding ways to improve them.
On the inaugural flight, Miura 1 carried an experiment from the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) to study the near-zero-gravity conditions in which the rocket spent part of its journey. The device, weighing about 100 kilograms, gathered information to carry out future similar experiments.
