Miura 1, the first 'Marca España' rocket to launch small satellites

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There are engineers who are part of important projects and others who conceive them from the beginning, shape them and defend them through thick and thin until they make them come true.

This is how

manufactured

to transport small artificial satellites, up to 100 kilos, while at the same time working on its next project, the Miura 5, for loads of 450 kilos .

This company, based in Elche and with a test bench in Teruel, has brought the launcher to the esplanade of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, where it was presented today in society at a press conference. The event was attended, among others, by the former Minister of Science and astronaut Pedro Duque; the director of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), José María Salom; or the head of the Office for the Coordination of Strategic Initiatives associated with European Funds of the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI), Jorge López.

Miura 1, designed to reach a maximum altitude of 150 kilometers, is the dream of two young engineers who have taken their ideas from office to office to convince investors to bet on them. Given the results, having a date with "Mortadelo y Filemón", nicknamed in this way for the "bizarre" of their project, has had to be something like receiving an unknown Elon Musk but twice. The two Raúles (Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú), co-founders of PLD Space, are "two young people from Elche who had the illusion of reaching space," said Ezequiel Sánchez, CEO of the company, at the ceremony.

But perhaps these two talents are more like Hergé's Tintin on the Moon than Ibáñez's comic strips. With 14 years, Torres invested his pay as a teenager in "aerospace experiments", an adventure that almost truncated the Civil Guard by buying explosives online for their home launches. Both founded their company at the age of 22 and 23, ten years ahead of Musk's age when he created SpaceX, a personal milestone that

(20% public and the rest private).

On July 22, 2020, PLD Space announced the first big success of the Miura 1, the payload vibration tests, a path that has not been easy. The Miura are equipped with

: one TEPREL-B for the Miura 1 and five TEPREL-C for the Miura 5. "Developing a propulsion system from scratch is difficult," Raúl Torres told THE WORLD. INTA has developed solid propulsion engines before and there is a precedent for liquid fuel in the defunct Capricorn program, canceled in 2000.

"When we raised it, CDTI was the institution that gave us the project for the development of the TEPREL propulsion system, an acronym for Reusable Propulsion Space Technology for Launchers. This has been one of the great technological challenges of our company", he highlighted Towers. "Another important part has been the electronics,

. In addition to the structures." In this sense, Torres has commented that our country builds airplanes or ships, "but never before have complete structures for launchers been developed, or they are made of carbon, as in the Ariane 5 and 6 or Vega program." Now, for Miura 5, although it is much larger (five times larger) "technologically it is no longer so complicated", he added.

The niche of these launchers is in the transport of the small. The mission of the Miura rockets is to "

, which requires launchers on a different scale," said Sánchez. For this reason, they are part of the European project SMILE, which stands for SMall Innovative Launcher for Europe, an expanding industry that is progressing along with the development of nano-satellites and microsatellites with different uses. "We all consume the space industry whether or not we are aware of it", Raúl Verdú has remarked. "When we use a mobile phone or a GPS we use space technology."

The manufacture of smaller artificial satellites (military, telecommunications, navigation, astronomical or Earth observation), such as the Spanish Nanosat 01, is increasingly common. This technology, which often travels sharing space in large rockets, can now do it independently and more affordably, recovering components and avoiding the conflict of the timeline and the target orbit of larger projects.

Spain has contributed to transport rocket technology since 1990 with

, developed by the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA). With it, several stages of notable success were reached, such as the manufacture of the INTA-255, INTA-100 or INTA-300 rockets, with test launches from El Arenosillo, Huelva. However, the lack of financing for its commercial exit led to the cancellation of the project in 2000, before reaching its final stage and its launch from the island of Hierro, whose space center for such a mission was not carried out either.

The private company PLD Space takes over in this section of our space program to complete the first launcher "Marca España", as they call it. The name of Miura for the rockets 1 and 5 of PLD Space is not inspired by the fast Italian model of Lamborghini sports cars, as has been joked outside our borders, but by the famous Sevillian fighting bull herd of the Miura family, the braves who have created a legend for their marked temperament.

Although the first flight of the

, the eyes for the launch of the

orbital rocket

) are on the Spaceport of Kourou (French Guiana), since for this, the company "only has to build the launch ramp," Torres explained. Although they have also studied doing it in bases in Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden or the United Kingdom, "for those other places much more investment would be needed," he argued. Furthermore, the fact that Kourou is European (it was built by the French National Center for Space Studies -CNES- and is operated by ESA) makes it easier to "open up to private initiatives, something the CNES is working on".

PLD Space has emerged from an idea that in just ten years has become material.

It is now very close to fulfilling its objective, the transport of small satellites.

"I do not celebrate milestones much because when we achieve them I am already thinking about the next one and

" said Verdú.

The company has the collaboration of INTA for this.

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