Bigos 4. Successful flight of Polish suborbital rocket prototype

On the Drawsko Pomorskie military range, SpaceForest, based in Gdynia, made the first flight of the Bigos 4 rocket with a height of 15 km. The purpose of the test was to verify the aerodynamic parameters and design assumptions of the rocket in supersonic flight. The tests were considered successful.

Bigos 4 is a 1: 2 scale model of a future suborbital rocket of the SIR (inexpensive suborbital rocket) class called Perun, which is currently being developed by a team of engineers from SpaceForest of the Pomeranian Technology and Technology Park in Gdynia.

Read also: The rocket model is ready, testing now on the training ground

Two tests for us

The Sunday test of the Bigos 4 rocket was exemplary. The vehicle reached a maximum speed of 2 Ma and reached a ceiling of 15 km in 50 seconds.

– The 15 km ceiling, although not a limitation in the performance of the Bigos 4 rocket, is currently the maximum limit set on the Drawsko training ground for safety reasons. However, it suffices to develop a supersonic speed and to test the aerodynamic properties of the rocket under very thin conditions. The test also allowed us to confirm the previous calculations regarding the amount of fuel to be refueled so as not to exceed this limit. We are happy to have been able to verify our hypotheses with great precision – he says Robert Magiera, President of SpaceForest. – Just like after the first test, we recovered all the elements of the rocket under appropriate conditions for the next flight. It is also extremely important that, as part of the preparation at the start, we were able to complete the refueling procedure for the rocket after placing it on the launcher. Because such a procedure is required by port services, among others in Sweden or Norway, it is essential to test them to be able to use them for commercial purposes.
The Bigos 4 rocket has a height of 5500 mm and a diameter of 204 mm. The motor vehicle weighs 65 kg and its starting mass is 100 kg. Its design can be 100 percent. recovered and ready for re-use within 72 hours of the previous mission.

The first flight of the Bigos 4 rocket took place on Friday 2 November 2018 at the military aerodrome of Babie Dołach, near Gdynia. The vehicle was launched at a height of 1000 meters. The flight was successful and the entire bearing system was found.

Bigos 4 prototype of the rocket Perun

Bigos 4 is a scale model 1: 2 of a future suborbital rocket of the SIR category called Perun. The rocket is designed and developed by SpaceForest as part of a project co-funded by the National Center for Research and Development (NCBR). The objective of the project is to create the first Polish rocket capable of carrying 50 kg of freight up to a ceiling of 150 km. The launch of a full-scale rocket model is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2019, while the target rocket is expected to fly in 2022.

Perun is a one-legged, 11-foot rocket powered by an SF1000 hybrid rocket propulsion (1 million Ns) developed at SpaceForest. The use of such a player allows you to adjust the acceleration of the vehicle during the flight and to break the mission in case of emergency without it being necessary to destroy the rocket . Thanks to the developed control system, it will be possible to control the trajectory of the flight and to use the planned take-off point in complete safety. The rocket will be equipped with a controlled component retrieval system allowing a safe landing in a defined area, which will significantly minimize recovery costs and preparation time between consecutive flights.

– The Perun rocket will be able to offer an economical platform for research in a microgravity environment. Designed to guarantee high performance at very low operating costs, it can become an attractive business choice for customers in the Polish and overseas markets, offering the lowest prices for such services in the world – says Robert Magiera.

There was Kret, now Bigos, and this is not the end

The launch of the Bigos 4 missile is one of the important events of the Polish space industry, which takes place in the second half of November 2018. On November 26, 2018, a NASA InSight landing took place on March, aboard a device penetrating the Martian soil with a push mechanism called Kretem, developed and manufactured in Poland by Astronika company with the support of companies and national research institutes. Also in November, the launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to put into orbit two Polish satellites: the student PW-Sat2 and ICEYE-X2 Finnish-Polish and the satellite ESEO / S-50, placed under the auspices of the European Space Agency, for which the telecommunications system was prepared at the Wrocław University of Technology.

Negotiations conducted by the Polish Space Agency on joining the European Space Surveillance and Tracking SST are coming to an end. The accession of our country to the consortium will allow national entities to participate in projects funded by the European Union, whose budget in the current financial perspectives will rise to nearly 100 million euros. euros. The agency is also finalizing the analytical work on the results of a survey on the needs of the Polish public administration concerning the use of satellite data, carried out by PAK as part of the Sat4Envi project.

Industry with a cosmic future

The Polish space industry currently has around fifty entities, mainly in the SME sector, whose activities are focused on satellite and space technologies. For more than 100 entities, projects in this region are only part of the activity. The dynamic development of this industry started with the accession of Poland to the European Space Agency in November 2012. Polish companies and research institutes have effectively used six years of membership of our country at ESA. They have set up or implemented on behalf of the European agency about 330 contracts with a total value of more than 100 million euros, they have participated in prestigious ESA space missions such as: Rosetta – for 67P / Churyumow-Gerasimenko, Cassini-Huygens – for Titan, the moon of Saturn, Proba 3 – explore the outer layer of the solar atmosphere, ExoMars2016 or JUICE – until the moons of Jupiter. Cosmic specialties such as robotics, optoelectronics, microsatellite systems and the integration of small satellites or suborbital rockets are developing in the country.