#esrange

[coupleofdays]

While I will always be disappointed that we never got to see what the Neo-Sweden space colony (or even Neo-Sweden on Earth) looked like in G Gundam, we did at least get a very brief look at "The Neo-Sweden base" launching rockets for the Gundams on Earth to reach space in one of the last episodes:

My headcanon is that this base is an extremely expanded version of the real rocket launch facility Esrange, in northern Sweden. Presumably, in the Future Century, it's expanded from a test facility for weather balloons and suborbital rockets into an actual "spaceport".

To get slightly more serious for a moment, it's worth noting that such an expansion would probably be made by exploiting land surrounding the current-day Esrange facility, land belonging to the Sámi people, destroying their traditional reindeer-herding grounds to build launchpads and whatnot. But hey, if Neo-Sweden are fine with turning a 17-year-old orphan girl into a mindless berserker, I wouldn't put it past them to have no problems with screwing over an indigenous population. It's not like current-day Sweden hasn't already done that in numerous ways.

[explorationimages]

Following a successful launch of Maxus 9 the largest European sounding rocket with scientific micro gravity experiments, Airbus is providing a stunning 360° view from space. The spacecraft, launched from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, was equipped by Airbus with support from their joint venture partner Swedish Space Corporation in order to provide unique 360° footage of the launch from the rocket perspective. Viewers can see spectacular images of the take-off, down to Lapland getting smaller while the rocket soars into the sky, then spectacular views of the Planet and Space once the sounding rocket goes through the atmosphere and reaches its highest altitude of 700km, before the payload falls free back down to earth, and completes its’ parachute-assisted touchdown. The Maxus programme is a joint venture between Swedish Space Corporation and Airbus, providing access to microgravity for ESA-contracted experiments. Sounding rockets are important to the scientific community as they offer research institutes a one-stop lab in which they can perform micro-gravity experiments. Technicians receive data and can adjust parameters thanks to real-time transmission to ground stations throughout the free fall time. Being able to launch, monitor and retrieve experiments in one day enables researchers to analyze their results almost immediately.

[explorationimages]

On Tuesday 8th November 2016, 10:30 LT, -18°C: our Hybrid sounding rocket HEROS 3 rocket was launched from ESRANGE, Kiruna. At almost perfect weather conditions and great visibility it reached an apogee of 32.3 km according to GPS and acceleration data and was successfully recovered with the drogue and main parachute being released. This sets a new record for European student and amateur rocketry. Furthermore, to our knowledge this is also a new altitude world rocket for hybrid rockets built by students. The maximum speed of HEROS 3 was 2600 km/h with a Mach number of 2.3. Further flight analysis is ongoing and more awesome video data will be released soon. The hybrid rocket engine delivers 10 kN of thrust with a paraffin-based fuel and Nitrous Oxide as the oxidizer.

[nasagoddard]

BARREL Team Arrives in Sweden for Mini-Campaign by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Via Flickr: Two of the BARREL team members were able to make creative use of some excess supplies at Esrange Space Center. After a long day of payload preparation on Aug. 4, 2015, two of the team members blew off some steam on the balloon launch pad. The NASA-funded BARREL – which stands for Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses – measures electrons in the atmosphere near the poles. Such electrons rain down into the atmosphere from two giant radiation belts surrounding Earth, called the Van Allen belts. For its third campaign, BARREL is launching six balloons from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden. BARREL is led by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire...Credit: NASA/Dartmouth/Alexa Halford. NASA image use policy. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. Follow us on Twitter Like us on Facebook Find us on Instagram