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On This Day In Space: May 2, 2005: Maser 10 launches on final flight of Skylark rocket

On This Day In Space: May 2, 2005: Maser 10 launches on final flight of Skylark rocket_645114c2f3c37.jpeg

On May 2, 2005, the Skylark sounding rocket launched on its 441st and final flight. Skylark was a British sounding rocket designed to carry European research experiments into the upper atmosphere and beyond the boundary of space. 

The last Skylark rocket launched with a Swedish mission called Maser 10. This was the tenth mission of the Swedish Space Corporation’s microgravity rocket program. Its payload included four experiment modules with three experiments in fluid physics and two biology experiments. 

After 48 years in service, the British Skylark rocket motor begins its final mission on Monday May 2, 2005 launching the 12.8-meter (42.2-foot) sounding rocket Maser 10 into space from Swedish Space Corporation SSC’s launching facility Esrange in Kiruna nothern Sweden. The first launch of a Skylark was made in 1957 and it has been used 96 times for launching sounding rockets from the pad at Esrange and 440 times in total. Maser 10 is part of the Maser sounding rocket program for research in microgravity _ the state of near-weightlessness experienced inside a falling object. (Image credit: SSC)

One biology experiment studied the way microgravity affects metabolism in cells from mammals. The other looked at a protein that affects inflammation and immunity in humans. 

The physics experiments investigated how microgravity affects the evaporation, thermal radiation and convection in liquids. Maser 10 carried these experiments to an altitude of 155 miles, or 93 miles above the atmosphere, where the rocket experienced six minutes of weightlessness.

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