THE FINAL SKYLARK SOUNDING ROCKET LAUNCH

Saturday, 30 April, 2005 will be an important milestone in the history
of British spaceflight activities. The 441st, and last ever, Skylark
sounding rocket will be launched from the arctic rocket range,
ESRANGE, near Kiruna in the north of Sweden.

This flight will be the culmination of a 50 year history of sounding
rocket launches on behalf of a large number of agencies including SRC,
NASA, ESA, DLR and SSC. The rocket will be the last to be flown from
the final batch of 2-stage Skylark 7 vehicles. The mission, code-named
MASER 10, is one of a series of microgravity missions of the Swedish
Space Corporation and sponsored by the European Space Agency. The
scientific payload is 4927 mm in length and weighs 351 kg. The
predicted apogee is 230 km which will give approximately 6 minutes of
microgravity for the experiments.

The event is expected to be covered by BBC television news on Tuesday,
3 May

Those interested in the significant achievements of British sounding
rockets are recommended to look at the following sites for more info:

http://www.univ-perp.fr/fuseurop/skylar_e.htm
http://www.fathom.com/feature/190261/