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The Hound’s Launch

Our rocket “The Hound” launched in Nevada (USA) yesterday around 18:15 Austrian time. The launch was near perfect except for the fact that we could only reach an altitude of 13 km. Despite this being the highest rocket the TU Wien Space Team has managed to launch and is thus a record within the team, it wasn’t enough for the European nor the World record. The cause of the smaller altitude: The motor of the upper stage did not ignite.
There are two possible causes for this and thus far we have not been able to isolate the exact cause. The Hound’s boardcomputer possesses several safety features in regards to rocket attitude, altitude, and velocity which prevents the ignition of the upper stage motor. Therefore it could either be that the boardcomputer prevented the ignition due to safety concerns or the motor did not ignite because of other reasons.
Due to the change in flight parameters the upper stage was damaged upon landing. Cause for this was that the second parachute of the upper stage did not deploy and because the mass of the upper stage was significantly higher with an unburnt motor.
In the next few days we will analyse the telemetry data and the recovered rocket in order to precicely isolate the cause of the unignited second motor.
Despite not being able to break the records we set out to break we are still very happy with the results. Yesterday we set one milestone within the TU Wien Space Team and we are eager to reach many more.
Stay tuned for more news, more projects, and definitely more rocket science!
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