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Our second attempt to give LOHAN a good banging: Live tomorrow

You need a hot thrust for a proper trip to heaven and back

The Register's mighty Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team is gearing up for a second test flight of our Vulture 2 spaceplane's vital rocket motor igniter assembly, following Monday's dramatic first attempt which unfortunately ended on a Spanish mountainside without the essential test firing carried out.

Click here for a bigger version of the LOHAN graphicWe still don't know if we can persuade a rocket motor to light at altitude - something which is essential for the ultimate success of LOHAN, which is intended to see Vulture 2 blast off into the black skies from beneath its helium first stage in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Tomorrow afternoon at around 2pm local time here in the Iberian peninsula, we'll be filling another mighty orb with helium and sending it aloft. On board for the ride will be the aforementioned igniter, controlled by the Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) control board, which uses GPS data to fire the igniter at a predetermined altitude.

We'll also be sending up the Raspberry Picam rig, and one of Anthony Stirk's back-up PAVA trackers. We'll post the radio frequencies before the launch tomorrow, just as soon as we've tweaked the kit.

The live launch and pursuit action will be available for your viewing pleasure here, and we'll be tweeting intermittently here.

The live snaps beamed from the onboard Raspberry Picam will land here, and the usual live map will be here. ®


Further LOHAN resources:

  • New to LOHAN? Try this mission summary for enlightenment.
  • You can find full LOHAN coverage right here.
  • Join the expert LOHAN debate down at Reg forums.
  • All the LOHAN and Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) vids live on YouTube.
  • For our SPB photo archive, proceed directly to Flickr.
  • We sometimes indulge in light consensual tweeting, as you can see here.

LOHAN - A Special Projects Bureau production in association with...

  • 3T RPD logo
  • University of Southampton logo
  • Applied Vacuum Engineering logo
  • Escher Technologies
  • Flashpoint Fireworks logo
  • HAB Supplies logo
  • Rock 7 logo

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