The sounding rocket Texus 44 was successfully launched today from the Swedish Space Corporation’s launch facility Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden . The launch took place at 11:30 (UT) and the rocket provided 376 seconds of weightlessness time for the 4 experiments on board.

The Texus project is a sounding rocket programme with the primary aim to investigate the properties and behaviour of materials, fluids and biological samples in a weightlessness environment. Texus 44 is funded by ESA (European Space Agency) and carried out jointly by DLR, EADS Astrium, Kayser-Threde and Swedish Space Corporation.

- Today we launched the Brazilian rocket motor VSB-30 for the third time from Esrange Space Center and from a safety point of view we are very pleased, says Mr. Tomas Hedqvist, project manager for Texus 44, Swedish Space Corporation. The flight was nominal, the recovery smooth and the payload was back for analysis 83 minutes after launch, as planned.

- All experiments functioned very well and the video downlink worked flawlessly during the flight. The newly developed European recovery system on its first flight enabled a safe landing of the scientific payload, says Mr. Wolfgang Herfs, project manager for ESA. I feel very happy about this great success which will provide a good boost for the team that is presently preparing the Texus 45 launch, scheduled for next Monday.