Maxus 6 Launch Highlights
ESA TV Exchanges
The ""small"" Maxus launchers rise into space from the snow-covered tundra of northern Sweden. It is a 12 tonne, slender 15 metre tall vehicle, carrying the scientific payload. In November last year, the sixth in the series was launched, with eight experiments on for instance, silicon growth, solidification of aluminium alloys, plant growth, and the physical behaviour of foam. Maxus offers these experiments near-weightlessness up 13 minutes.
Nights are long and bitterly cold in Lapland. Temperatures can drop to minus 30 C. In the night, the Aurora Borealis bathes the launch site in an eerie light for the spectacle that is about to take place. As for every rocket launch, faces are tense as they monitor the consoles. The engineers are anxious to fulfil their contract for the scientists whose experiments are on board.
This TV Exchange provides an account of the last days before launch, and of lift-off and recuperation of the experiments.
The script will be on-line as

MAXUS 6 ñ Launch Highlights
Up in the artic circle, deep into Swedish Lapland, more famous for reindeers and Santa, the European Space Agency launches experiments in microgravity. The Maxus 6 sounding rocket: reliving a successful mission. The vast tundra of the Article Circle. This is Lapland in the northern part of Sweden. A vast white desert...home to reindeer ...and to Esrange, the Swedish Space Corporation rocket base in Kiruna. ...and the launch pad for the European Space Agency's Maxus Programme, devoted to microgravity scientific experiments. Communication manager Johanna Berstrom-Roos says Esrange is the perfect site for Maxus. ITV Johnanna Berstrom-Roos Esrange...area Maxus 6 will be launched the following day. A twelve tone rocket, 15 Meters high made up of 2 sections: one containing the engine and the other the individually closed cylinders which house one or two experiments each , chosen for their eventual practical application. Among the experiments packed on-board, particles dynamics, plant gr