The MORABA team has been at the rocket launch site
in Esrange for several days now, but no one has put on the
MAPHEUS-4 T-shirt yet. Nobody will until the payload and en-
gine are ready. Superstition reigns, so although the mission em-
blems for MASER 12, MAPHEUS-3, REXUS/BEXUS and SHEFEX II
are present at the 08:30 meeting with the Swedish colleagues,
MAPHEUS-4 remains unseen. The mission is proving difficult.
Already a few steps behind schedule, the experiments are prov-
ing a challenge. The MORABA team has no option but to wait
while the scientists from the DLR Institute of Materials Physics
work through strength-sapping night shifts.
Frank Scheuerpflug, responsible for the mission with
MORABA, goes through the status checklist. “The rocket motor
is complete,” says Wolfgang Jung. “So is the recovery system,”
adds Marcus Hörschgen-Eggers. “We are still having a bit of
trouble with the X ray tubes,” explains Florian Kargl, Principal
Investigator of MAPHEUS. Silence falls for a few moments.
Some members of the MORABA team travelled directly from the
launch of the WADIS rocket in Norway, and have been away
from home for several weeks. A swift, uncomplicated launch
would have been welcome, but life is not a box of chocolates
and the complex payload needs another while before it is ready.
This is the first time that an X-ray system will record the diffu-
sion of molten material specimens during flight. “Ok, so we’ll
move the bench test to this afternoon,” Scheuerpflug decides.
Communication between the experiments and the MORABA
service module must be spot-on, and the afternoon test is in-
tended to put it through its paces. Until then, Florian Kargl, Jörg
Drescher, Christian Neumann and Michael Balter will check the
X-ray system software and conduct some final tests.
The MORABA mobile rocket base is the ‘flight ticket’ to
scientific experiments
By Manuela Braun
A family-run rocket
business
Over the last 45 years, the team at the mobile rocket base, MORABA, has launched more than 500 rockets and
balloons around the world – sometimes in Norway, others in Australia, Antarctica or in Brazil. The campaigns in
remote rocket launch sites generally last several weeks. “We are almost like a family – it wouldn’t work otherwise,”
says Wolfgang Jung from MORABA, part of the Space Operations and Astronaut Training Department. This time,
the ‘family’ has travelled to the rocket launch site in Esrange, located roughly 40 kilometres from Kiruna, Sweden’s
northernmost city. With the microgravity research rocket MAPHEUS-4, the DLR Institute of Materials Physics in Space
expects to conduct two experiments in microgravity. But the mission will take a different turn…
The traditional family portrait – the
engineers from MORABA, scientists and
Swedish colleagues strike a pose with the
MAPHEUS-4 payload.
At MORABA, safety comes first: the
motor’s igniter is blocked during
preparations.
MAPHEUS-4 LAUNCH
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