Astos Solutions Participates in the MAXUS 8 Launch Campaign
In the far north of Sweden the weather is cold. Up to -48°C were measured at the Esrange rocket range.
Here in this cold but very beautiful landscape a team of scientists and engineers is preparing the 8th MAXUS launch. Besides other scientific payloads there is also a small re-entry capsule onboard.
This capsule hosts a transmitter that allows to monitor its re-entry trajectory in real-time.
Designed to serve as a blackbox for future destructive re-enries of ATV, this experiment will improve the knowledge about the physical effects during such a re-entry and will help to develop models that allow a more accurate predicition of these re-entries and the risk for the population and assets.
Unlike other payloads the so-called SHARK capsule has no parachute to decelerate its fast free-fall from more than 700km altitude. 
Therefore a crash-resistant design shall avoid demage to the senitive electronics inside. Should the transmission of its current position fail for any reason, it will be hard to recover the capsule, mainly because of its small size and the lack of a parachute that would be clearly visible.
Therefore a team of Astos Solutions employees is currently on-site to predict the impact point of SHARK. This predicting simulation with our flexible simulation software ASTOS is based on telemetry and tracking data that is recorded for the main payload. A Monte Carlo analysis with ASTOS estimates the error ellipses around the nominal impact point.
Equipped with the results from Astos Solutions the recovery team will board their helicopter. So even in a case of a transmitter failure a fast recovery is made possible.
Update [2010-06-15]:
While the main payload was recovered and all experiemnts worked nominally, no signal was from SHARK was received. Without this signal and the huge amount of snow that covers everything already after some minutes it was not possible to recover SHARK on the day of the launch. After the snow melted an additional helicopter search campaign was conducted. The mission was partly successful: while an aft skirt cone that was broken off the payload during flight was found, SHARK is still missing. Therefore a second recovery mission organized by Astos Solutions is scheduled from 18th till 23rd of June.