Introduction to RockLab Concept

Rocklab is a quite new concept, the concept of a flying laboratory where students, professors and companies will be able to test their experiments.

On the one hand, Rocklab will make possible to carry out experiments under extreme conditions of accelerations, vibrations, etc. On the other hand, it will also enable to perform experiments under microgravity and low-gravity conditions.

This flying laboratory will give students, professors and companies the opportunity to put their ideas and projects into the rocket to try them out. For example, this vehicle will be able to transport “CanSat”1 of different categories, or new positioning and telemetry systems that could be tested on board. Additionally, it could be used to certify new electronic systems to be implemented in real satellites. This vehicle also provides total flexibility, since its length can be adapted to the payload. And being a single-stage rocket, its architecture makes Rocklab simple and robust.

However, Rocklab will not just be a vehicle which will carry experiments as payload in order to verify their performance. Furthermore, Rocklab will be a test bench to get more reliable information about rockets and improve different rocket subsystems and configurations. This will help to widen the knowledge in this field so as to support future projects.