Picking up the pieces

This is exactly what TU Delft’s Stratos team tried to do this month – to find and then extract data from two data cards stored inside the rocket that the Dare (Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering) team built and launched on March 17, 2009, in Kiruna, Sweden, successfully breaking the European altitude record in amateur rocketry.
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.
Kiruna, which is the closest Swedish settlement to the Esrange rocket range, is a small town located beyond the polar circle. All rockets launched in this area are launched in a northern direction and land in the Esrange Impact Area, which is a large, diamond-shaped, people-free area, some 120 km long and 75 km wide.

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.

De Sebastiaansbrug sluit tien maanden. Dit betekent dat de brug, die TU Noord met de binnenstad verbindt, vier maanden korter is afgesloten dan gepland. Afsluiting van de brug is nodig, omdat hij aan renovatie toe is. De brug bevat scheuren en is niet sterk genoeg voor zware vrachtwagens en de nieuwe tramlijn 19. De werkzaamheden duren korter doordat ook ’s avonds en in de weekenden gewerkt zal worden. De gemeente wil dat de TU tijdens de afsluiting van de brug goed bereikbaar blijft. Vanaf station Delft rijden daarom bussen via station Delft-Zuid naar de TU. De werkzaamheden aan de brug beginnen in januari 2010. Als alles volgens plan verloopt, gaat de brug in november van dat jaar weer open. De aanleg van tramlijn 19 start in 2011 en de tram moet in datzelfde jaar gaan rijden.