DLR’S MOBILE ROCKET BASE – 47 YEARS OF MICROGRAVITY AND TECHNICAL EXPERIMENTS ON SUBORBITAL FLIGHTS

Abstract

Mobile Rocket Base (MORABA), a division of the Space Operations and Astronaut Training Department of DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) provides the national and international scientific community with the opportunity to prepare and implement rocket- and balloon-borne experiments. The fields of research include aeronomy, geophysics, material science and hypersonic research and are conducted in cooperation with a variety of international partners. MORABA offers a number of mechanical and electrical systems for use on rocket , balloon and short term satellite missions. Depending on the scientific objectives, an appropriate launch range is selected and complemented or fully equipped with MORABA’s mobile infrastructure, such as launcher, telemetry, telecommand and tracking stations. MORABA procures the suitable converted military surplus or commercial launch vehicles, as well as all necessary mechanical and electrical subsystems to the customers. This paper gives at first a short overview over MORABA’s tasks in general, and the most important milestones in the history of MORABA. After that, we describe the capabilities which MORABA offers to fulfil scientific flights on sounding rockets. We also describe shortly some recently developed technology, which will be used in upcoming sounding rocket missions.