• The event brought together various public representatives such as the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez; the Minister of Science, Diana Morant; the Secretary General for Innovation, Teresa Riesgo; the commissioner for the Aerospace PERTE, Miguel Belló; and the Director General of INTA, Lieutenant General Julio Ayuso Miguel.
• The flight demonstration campaign of the suborbital micro launcher starts, which will take place at the facilities of the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center (CEDEA) of the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA).
• After completing the preparation work and the relevant tests, the Spanish company has several launch windows between April and May.

The Spanish company PLD Space has publicly presented the MIURA 1 rocket at its launch base in Huelva. This milestone marks the start of the flight demonstration campaign of the suborbital micro-launcher, which will take place at the facilities of the El Arenosillo Experimentation Center (CEDEA) of the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA), belonging to the Spanish Ministry of Defense. After completing the preparation work and the relevant tests, the company has different launch windows between April and May.

The final objective is to perform a first flight test to validate in real conditions the technology developed so far by PLD Space. During the following launches of MIURA 1, the flight requirements will be extended until obtaining valid knowledge and experience to transfer to the orbital rocket already under development by the company, MIURA 5, which will fly from French Guiana at the end of 2024.

During the presentation of the first private rocket in Europe, the founders of PLD Space, Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú, together with the CEO, Ezequiel Sánchez, have advanced the company's plans for the coming months in an event that has brought together national authorities such as the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez; the Minister of Science, Diana Morant; the Secretary General for Innovation, Teresa Riesgo; the Commissioner for Aerospace PERTE, Miguel Belló; or the Director General of INTA, Lieutenant General Julio Ayuso Miguel. The event also brought together various relevant political, social and institutional representatives at state and regional level.

With this milestone, PLD Space takes another step forward in its mission to improve the lives of people on Earth from space, a booming market of 1.3 trillion dollars by 2040, according to the non-profit organization Space Foundation. However, "Europe is at a space crossroads," as CEO Ezequiel Sanchez noted. "The options for access to space by European launchers by 2023 are very limited, between zero and two launches, something totally unheard of for Europe and for this sector."

The co-founders of PLD Space assumed these difficulties and started working on a project that, 12 years later, is close to providing a new strategic capability for Spain. To compete in this complex market, the company has opted to provide differential advantages such as "reliability, in fact our MIURA 1 suborbital rocket will serve to demonstrate more than 70% of the technology of the MIURA 5 sustainable orbital launcher of which, before the end of the decade, we will offer more than 14 launches per year; excellent mission management; and a competitive cost, thanks to the internalization of the manufacture of all subsystems and our recovery and reuse technology", emphasized the co-founder and head of Business Development, Raúl Verdú.

The MIURA 1 test flight campaign will be like this

With the public presentation of MIURA 1 in Huelva, one of the most important milestones for PLD Space begins: the flight demonstration campaign of the suborbital rocket. The next step will take place at the company's hangar in El Arenosillo, where maintenance and launch preparation work will be carried out, ranging from pressure tests to propellant loading. Once these tasks are completed, the ramp will be assembled and transferred to the launch base at Médano del Loro.

Once on the pad from which MIURA 1 will fly, a series of rigorous tests will be performed to certify that the rocket is ready for flight. One of the most critical will be the Wet Dress Rehearsal (full propellant load test), which includes all the launch steps prior to engine ignition. Afterwards, the final test will be performed: the hot test (static fire test), in which the rocket engine will be ignited for five seconds and will be used to give the green light to the launch. At this moment, INTA and PLD Space will formalize the Flight Readiness Review (FRR), which will make official the preparation of the MIURA 1 launcher for its first launch. Thus, the company will begin all final reviews, final technical checks and simulations for this major milestone.

But before the flight, it will be the turn of the integration of the payload into the rocket shell. The demonstrator micro-launcher will carry an experiment of the German Center for Applied Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), belonging to the University of Bremen, with the aim of verifying in microgravity conditions some of the technologies that this scientific institution has created for the space industry. Then, yes, the time will have come to formalize the milestone between INTA, PLD Space and the rest of the teams involved to authorize the flight: the Launch Readiness Review (LRR).

How the test flight will be carried out

During April and May, PLD Space has different MIURA 1 flight windows granted by the Spanish Ministry of Defense. In addition to the safety of the area, the launch is subject to the availability of the rocket itself and to weather conditions, as a surface wind speed of less than 20 km/h, a calm atmosphere of winds at altitude and the absence of potential storms in the vicinity are required.

"If during the launch procedure, which lasts about 10 hours, a minimal risk factor is detected; that day's operation will be aborted and the next flight window will start from scratch," explains co-founder and Launch Director Raul Torres. "We're always going to prefer to delay the flight than end up with a chopped-up rocket."

All this implies that the company manages a margin of flight opportunities between the months of April and May, a range that falls within the usual range in the space launcher sector. "Our goal is to achieve a milestone for Spain and Europe, but we still have everything to prove," concludes Ezequiel Sanchez. "We know that many challenges await us, although we are certain that we will be able to solve them."