The launch of the Miura 1, the rocket designed and built by the Elche company PLD Space, from the military base of Médano del Loro, in Moguer (Huelva) has been aborted again this morning for the second time when the engine was turned on by causes that are being analyzed.

After the mission had to be aborted in the final phase on May 31st due to strong gusts of wind at altitude that did not guarantee safety, this morning, although further progress has been made in the process, it could not be completed either. .

The company communicated this Friday afternoon the scheduled time for this second attempt, after the last meteorological sounding balloon launched at 2:00 p.m. confirmed that the weather conditions and the mission's flight safety study were favourable.

As reported through the streaming broadcast, Sara Poveda, first employee of PLD Space; and Roberto Palacios, systems engineer for MIURA 5 -the reusable suborbital rocket that is intended to be launched in 2025 from French Guiana-, the cause, on this occasion, was an “abort” at the moment of engine ignition, the causes of which are being analyzing, although the team considers it “a success” to have reached this point.

The launch has been coordinated from the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), a nearby facility where the rocket has been since April.

The chronology, a fairly long and complex process, began on Friday afternoon and shortly before 2:26 a.m. the “go on go” began, a “crucial” moment in the chronology in which it is verified that the different subsystems of the rocket, as well as the launch base and the meteorology are in optimal conditions.

On this occasion, the green light has been received from all the subsystems and the full countdown has even been carried out, although at 2:43, just as the engine started, the mission was aborted.

In this way, the company will look for a new launch window to carry out this first test of the return of the Miura 1, the technological demonstrator that will serve as the basis for the Miura 5.

The flight is expected to last 6 minutes in which microgravity and apogee conditions have been reached at 80 kilometers high; finally, a team from PLD Space will be in charge of collecting the rocket in the Atlantic Ocean once the splashdown has been completed

We will have to keep waiting to see the Miura 1, named after the wild cattle and as a symbol of the Spanish brand, become the first 100% Spanish private rocket to go into space, and, with this, value the work that 2011 began in Elche (Alicante) the engineers Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú with 3,000 euros which today translates into three offices and more than 130 employees.

The main objective of this first flight is to verify the operation of key technologies in flight, something that to date has not been possible: The thrust profile of the engine in flight conditions, the aerodynamic behavior of the launcher, the monitoring of the nominal trajectory , the nominal behavior of all subsystems under real conditions and exposure to real spatial conditions.

This will allow “gathering the largest volume of information possible for the validation and design of the technology that will later be transferred and integrated into Miura 5”; In addition, the mission will enable the ZARM Research Institute to study microgravity conditions, collecting information necessary to carry out scientific experiments in future suborbital flights..