MISSION BONDAR

To launch a rocket into the stratosphere to demonstrate the technologies involved and gain experience.

About Mission Bondar

Mission Bondar aims to launch a rocket into the stratosphere (+9 km) to demonstrate the technologies involved in the launch: the rocket and its ground systems. This mission is being developed by Cosmic Research with the collaboration of INTA (Spain’s Institute for Aerospace Technology) and BiSKY Team (the Basque Country University’s rocketry team). Bondar is the most complex mission ever developed by Spanish students to date and will help us pave the way for future commercialy-usable vehicles. The rocket will be launched from El Arenosillo Test Centre before 2022.

The Rocket

2.61 m

ROCKET LENGTH

131 mm

OUTER DIAMETER

33 kg

LIFT-OFF WEIGHT

16 g

MAX ACCELERATION

+9 km

ESTIMATED APOGEE

2.4 GHz

ONE-WAY RADIOLINK

Propulsion

Bondar is propelled by the second most powerful amateur solid rocket motor in the market: the Cesaroni 21062O3400-P. Packing 10.9 kg of propellant and 21 kN·s of total impulse, it will push Bondar for 6 intense seconds. Before choosing a commercial motor, Cosmic Research experimented with Al-AN experimental rockets but eventually opted for a COTS motor to maximize safety.

Structures & Recovery

The rocket is built in three independent modules joined together. From left to right, these are: the motor module, the recovery module and the avionics module. The structure is a monocoque type mostly made by aerospace-grade aluminum alloys. The recovery module contains two parachutes attached to the avionics module. When the rocket reaches its apogee, a CO2-based separation device is triggered. The motor and recovery modules will be discarded into the sea, while the avionics module will be recovered.

Aerodynamics

Bondar is a passively-stabilized rocket with four static, non-canted fins. The two main goals behind the aerodynamic design are to minimize the total drag of the vehicle and keep it stable during the lift-off and the powered flight. To do so, we have used our homebuilt flight simulator together with Missile DATCOM and ASTOS to ensure that the rocket design is both optimal and safe.

Avionics

Bondar’s onboard avionics performs four basic functions: obtains and processes flight data from sensors, stores it, sends it through a 2.4-GHz wireless link and activates the modules separation device. This subsystem has been almost entirely designed and built by members of BiSKY Team, from the Basque Country University.

Launchpad

Cosmic Research’s launchpad is currently the heaviest operational civil rocket launchpad in Spain. Built in 2020, it was designed to withstand Bondar launch and has already enabled 7 high-power rocket launches.

The structure has a height of 6.7 meters when the tower is lifted completely, weights around 248 kg and has a declared rocket weight capability of up to 50 kg. The tower has a modular design and can be shortened if needed. It can also be inclined to match various elevation angles (75º, 80º, 85º and 90º). The launchpad can operate both anchored to the ground and unanchored in a terrain with an up to 8º ramp. The base is built in construction steel alloys while the tower uses aluminum parts.

Flight Simulator

CR has developed its own flight simulator to better understand sounding rocket flight dynamics and be able to make its own flight predictions. It is a 6-DOF (Degree of freedom), stochastic simulator using the MonteCarlo approach, meaning it provides probabilistic results for rocket flight trajectories.

The program can provide estimates for both nominal and adverse scenarios, such as the breaking of one fin or the explosion of the motor. The simulator is being validated through smaller-scale launches and third-party software like Missile DATCOM and ASTOS.

Ground Station & Monitoring Centre

The ground station encompasses all the ground-based avionics systems arranged to receive the telemetry from the rocket. All its components are placed in the optronic system provided by INTA.

The monitoring centre takes care of the final processing and visualization of all relevant flight data. This data is shown in a machine-user interface developed by BiSKY Team. The interface is presented across Mission Control and to the Test Conductor – all green lights means GO for launch!

Launch site: El Arenosillo Test Centre

El Arenosillo Test Centre (CEDEA) is located near Huelva, in southwestern Spain (37 ° 05’59.96 ”N, 06 ° 44’10.63” W). From this base, more than 550 sounding rockets have been launched. El Arenosillo is owned and managed by INTA (National Institute of Aerospace Technology), an institution that belongs to the Spanish Ministry of Defense. It has all the experts and necessary facilities to support our launch operations.

Test Campaign at Launch Site (March 2021)

Between 1 March 2021 and 6 Mach 2021, Cosmic Research travelled to El Arenosillo to perform a series of tests in the frame of a Test Campaign preparing for the launch of Bondar. Its main objective was to test the compatibility between CR’s systems and CEDEA’s facilities and to recreate the countdown operations for the launch. During more than 30 hours, the team executed a total of four tests, including the validation of the avionics of both the air and ground systems, the verification of the compatibility of the launchpad with the terrain and the link of telemetry with the CEDEA facilities. The CR team also held several meetings with the staff. You can read the press release here.

Countdown Operations

System verification & assembly

Rocket transportation

Launchpad elevation

Activation of avionics

Installation of igniter

Ignition

End of propelled flight

Apogee

Parachute opening

Splashdown

Recovery

T: -5:00:00

T: -3:00:00

T: -1:40:00

T: -1:25:00

T: -0:45:00

T: 0:00:00

T: 0:00:06

T: 0:00:39

T: 0:00:49

T: 0:08:06

T: 3:30:00

Mission Collaborators

INTA (National Institute of Aerospace Technology) is a Public Research Organisation that depends on the Spanish Ministry of Defence. It is responsible for performing scientific research activities and prototypes in aerospace, aeronautics, hydrodynamics, security and defence technologies. It also provides technological services to companies in the industry, universities and other institutions. INTA’s El Arenosillo Test Centre is collaborating with Cosmic Research to launch Bondar with the spirit of fostering young talent in aerospace projects.

BiSKY Team is a group of students from the University of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU) that develops suborbital rockets for scientific purposes. Their goal is to build rockets that reach 100km in height, the limit from which space begins. Two members of BT are responsible of designing and operating Bondar’s avionics and ground-based electronic support systems.

Do you want to collaborate too?

Yes, as a company

Yes, as a student

Future Applications

Bondar belongs to the category of rockets called sounding rockets. These rockets began to be used in the 1940s for meteorological experiments and for military purposes. Currently, its main use is to conduct experiments in microgravity. Microgravity, popularly known as zero gravity or weightlessness, is a physical phenomenon that occurs when the resulting force on a body is equal to its weight. This can occur in the higher layers of the atmosphere, where there is hardly any air (i.e. there is no aerodynamic drag) and the rocket has used all its fuel (i.e. there is no thrust). At that moment, the body and its contents no longer feel external forces on them, just as astronauts in orbit do.

This microgravity environment is useful to understand the workings of physics in space and test space-proof hardware. While there are other platforms to experiment in microgravity such as vacuum towers or parabolic flights, sounding rockets are capable of providing superior quality microgravity (on the order of nano gs of acceleration). In the future, more powerful rockets based on Bondar could be used for microgravity flights. At the moment, Bondar is already capable of flying in hypergravity and low gravity, which may already prove useful to some scientists.