Maxus

Maxus Sounding Rocket

Mission Profile

The Maxus is a Swedish-German single-stage sounding rocket jointly developed by Airbus Defence & Space and the Swedish Space Corporation, designed to provide 12-16 minutes of microgravity for life sciences and materials science research experiments. Standing 15.5 m tall with a 0.7 m diameter and a liftoff mass of 1,530 kg, it uses a Castor 4B solid motor and reaches altitudes of approximately 700 km on suborbital trajectories. First launched in May 1991 from Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden, Maxus has supported decades of European microgravity research as a complement to orbital laboratory platforms.