Spain launches first commercial rocket to join space club

Recently, Spain, which is rarely heard of in the world's aerospace field, suddenly broke out a piece of news. Its space startup Aerospace Launch Company successfully completed the first flight of the Miura 1 suborbital rocket. This is the first commercial rocket in Spain and the first private project in Europe to send a reusable rocket into orbit.

A successful flight

The Miura 1 suborbital rocket is a single-stage rocket named after a Spanish bull breed. The rocket is a scaled-down version of the commercial launch vehicle planned to be launched in two years. The rocket is 12.5 meters high and 0.7 meters in diameter. It can carry a payload of about 100 kilograms during suborbital flight. The main engines of the rocket are two extrusion regenerative cooling engines named TEPREL-B, which use liquid oxygen-kerosene propellant. The rocket uses a two-way thrust vector control system for pitch and yaw control during flight. The rocket also uses a cold gas thruster attitude control power system.

Recovery of the Miura 1 rocket

The overall configuration of the Murat 1 rocket is in tandem, with a non-detachable nose cone at the top that can carry a payload. Below is the aerospace electronics compartment, which contains the rocket's onboard computer and payload monitoring system. Directly below the aerospace electronics compartment is a composite pressure vessel that stores helium for pressurization and nitrogen for attitude control. The attitude control thruster is also located here. Further down are the rocket's liquid oxygen tank and kerosene tank, and the liquid oxygen is transported to the engine through two pipelines on the side of the kerosene tank. At the tail of the rocket are the main engine and parachute recovery device.

The suborbital Miura 1 rocket carried a payload on its first mission. It was an experiment of the German Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity to study microgravity conditions during flight.

During this mission, the rocket successfully ignited and took off from a 25-meter-high cliff near the beach, flew straight up for about 30 seconds, and then turned south. The rocket reached the speed of sound after 1 minute of flight, and shut down the first-stage engine at about 2 and a half minutes to start inertial flight. The rocket continued to fly over the Bay of Cadiz for 306 seconds, reaching the highest point of the flight orbit 46 kilometers from the ground. After that, the rocket began to reenter and recover, using attitude control thrusters to reenter with its head facing forward. After entering the atmosphere, the deceleration parachute opened to slow the rocket's descent, and then the main parachute opened. The rocket finally splashed down with the help of the main parachute, and the rocket was successfully recovered by the Freedom 6 rescue ship on the day of launch.

Although the Spanish space shuttle company declared the flight a success, achieving all the technical goals related to its performance, the rocket flight actually reached a lower altitude than originally planned. The mission was originally planned to last 12 minutes and reach a maximum altitude of 80 kilometers above the Earth's surface.

Afterwards, Raul Torres, the launch director of the mission, explained on social media that the company changed the trajectory for "safety reasons" and lowered the apogee altitude to reduce the affected area in the event of a rocket failure.

The Miura 1 rocket had previously experienced two unsuccessful launch attempts. One was on May 31 this year, when the rocket had to abort due to strong winds at high altitude. The other was on June 16 this year, when the rocket automatically aborted 0.2 seconds before liftoff. Subsequent investigations showed that the umbilical cable connecting the rocket's electronic equipment compartment and the launch tower was released 0.1 seconds later than originally planned. After the rocket's first-stage engine ignited, the ground software determined that the umbilical cable was not disconnected, thus triggering a flight abort and shutting down the engine.

Long-term development plan

The Aerospace Launch Company was founded in Elche, Spain in 2011. It currently has 150 employees and has received 65 million euros in investment. Its goal is to build Spain's first commercial rocket. To this end, the Aerospace Launch Company's research and development is divided into two steps. The first step is to develop the reusable suborbital rocket "Mura 1" and achieve rocket orbit; the second step is to design, develop and test the "Mura 5" based on "Mura 1".

The Aerospace Launch Company's current plan is to start launching the larger Miura 5 rocket after launching Miura 1 twice. This means that the launch and recovery of Miura 1 will only be used for rocket testing so that engineers can collect as much data as possible. The company said in late June that it would postpone the next launch attempt until at least September to comply with the restrictions of Spain's laws to prevent wildfires. In fact, the third rocket, Miura 1 SN3, is also being manufactured at the Elche headquarters, but it will only be launched if the company believes that Miura 5 needs additional flight data.

The Miura 5 is a two-stage rocket with a length of 36 meters. It can carry a payload of 1,080 kg to a circular orbit at an inclination of 9.1 degrees at an altitude of 300 kilometers, or a payload of 540 kg to a circular sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers. The performance of the Miura 5 is slightly lower than that of other similar small rockets, such as the Alpha rocket of Firefly and the RFA One rocket of the Augsburg Rocket Factory.

The first stage of "Mura 5" is designed to be reusable and will use five TEPREL-C engines as power with a total thrust of 950 kilonewtons; the second stage uses a vacuum version of the TEPREL-C engine. The TEPREL-C engine used for "Mura 5" has been developed this summer based on the TEPREL-B engine, and the engine uses a gas generator cycle. The Aerospace Launch Company is also developing a space tug that can be installed on the second stage of the rocket to transport payloads to different orbits.

The Miura 5 rocket will be launched from the Kourou launch site in French Guiana. Aerospace Launch Company plans to launch the Miura 5 rocket in the fourth quarter of 2024, and plans to conduct a second test flight in 2025. The Miura 1 rocket will verify 70% of the design and technology for the Miura 5, including the entire flight control system.

Matching aerospace ambitions

The successful launch and recovery of the "Mura 1" is only the first step in a long journey. According to the Aerospace Launch Company, an investment of 125 million euros is needed to achieve the final version that can achieve commercial goals. The current 65 million euros is far from enough.

Aerospace Launch has signed an agreement with the government of Elche, Alicante, Valencia, Spain, to invest 85 million euros to build a new factory in the city to manufacture spacecraft and expand the test laboratory. At the same time, the two parties signed a physical agreement for Aerospace Launch to acquire the TO-4 department of the city's PGOU. This will create 325 high-quality jobs in the local area.

Although this launch was only a suborbital launch and was still some distance from its original altitude target, it marked a historic step for Spain on the road of space exploration, especially in the field of reusable rockets.

In recent years, Spain, a non-traditional aerospace power, has gradually shown its ambitions in the field of space. In 2022, Spain will rename its 83-year-old Air Force to the Aerospace Force. The difference in the name means that Spain will strengthen its strategic position and military capabilities in the field of space.

As one of the 17 member states of the European Space Agency, Spain has been active in the field of independent space in recent years. In 2021, Spain established the Space Surveillance Operations Center, whose main task is to monitor and understand space situations and provide services and support to the Spanish armed forces. In June 2022, Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez publicly announced plans to establish the Spanish Space Agency in early 2023 to strengthen the layout of the space field.

This successful launch not only marks a significant progress for Spain in the field of space, but also provides Europe with new space launch capabilities. Europe previously relied mainly on rockets such as Ariane 5 for space launches, but a series of factors have led to a stagnation in Europe's recent rocket launches. Virgin Orbit's attempt to launch a rocket from the UK earlier this year also failed miserably.

In order to meet the launch needs of small payloads, ESA plans to resume the service of Vega C rockets by the fourth quarter of 2024. At the same time, ESA is also actively seeking the participation of private spaceflight. Germany's Isar Aerospace and Augsburg Rocket Factory are developing the vehicle, which is expected to be launched for the first time next year. In the UK, Orbex and Skyrora are also studying small launch vehicles, but the specific date of the first launch has not yet been determined.

The successful launch in Spain will stimulate the interest of more private companies, promote innovation and development in the space sector, and pave the way for future space exploration. (Author: Yu Yuanhang, Image source: Aerospace Launch Company, Gatekeeper: Jiang Fan, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Committee of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation)