Lukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation and Andøya Space Sub-Orbital successfully launched a new, all-European research rocket.

The rocket, named ILR-33 AMBER 2K, took off from the launch pad on July 3rd at 13:09.
– The entire operation went smoothly, says a cheerful Kolbjørn Blix, head of Andøya Space Sub-Orbital. – There were no major technical challenges, and we could hardly have had better weather during the launch. I would like to extend a big thank you our team who made it look easy, and a big congratulations to our customer Lukasiewicz – Institute of Aviation (Łukasiewicz – Instytut Lotnictwa) – on a successful test.
The launch
– The task of the two small booster rockets was to provide the thrust in the first six seconds of the launch, says Blix. – After they were out of fuel, they were jettisoned and landed, as planned, inside the declared hazard area.
The rest of the rocket reached an apogee of 101 kilometers before falling back to Earth.
– It is absolutely fantastic, says Blix. – It was a small rocket, barely five meters long, about 23 cm in diameter, but it still had room for a 10-kilogram payload and was able to cross the magical 100-kilometer boundary. And the best part about the technology it uses is that it can be scaled up to make even larger rockets, in addition to using a so-called green fuel.
The front part of the rocket, which houses the payload in addition to the avionics, came down by parachute over the ocean and was recovered.
– It is impressive what our Polish colleagues have achieved in a relatively short time, concludes Blix. – They are now returning home with a lot of data from this technology test. I it is an important rocket because the technologies it uses are developed entirely in Europe. It is important for us in Europe to have access to our own independent technologies for access to space.