During the test, the pod's magnetic field properties were determined, as well as the necessary offsets for its on-board magnetometer experiment. During the test, the pod operated in flight mode uninterrupted for several hours, versus a mission life time of only 15 minutes. Therefore, the test automatically doubled as a long-term operational stability test for the instrument pod, which performed flawlessly as well.

Several modifications were made as a result of that test, mainly the replacement of some steel screws with those made of brass where stability allowed. A full demagnetization cycle was performed as well.

However, breaking with the tradition of only successfully completing tests so far, this time around a communication problem between the groundstation's telemetry receiver and the telemetry computer was discovered, to the effect that telemetry packages were correctly received, but later some of them appeared corrupted with random additional bytes when displayed. This problem is unrelated to the magnetic field simulation test, and didn't corrupt the test itself, but as of now is not understood and will have to be investigated in detail before declaring flight readiness.

Next in line, the performance of MIRIAM's instrument pod during a complete mission cycle will be tested, including a simulated launch and detachment sequence. A long range life telemetry test out in the open will round off the series of tests before the flight system will be installed underneath the rocket's nose cone.

MIRIAM is a flight test within the ARCHIMEDES atmospheric sounding probe for Mars project, and tests the full inflation and subsequent entry of an atmospheric entry balloon ("ballute") here on Earth. It is jointly developed by The Mars Society Germany and several institutes of the University of the Federal Armed Forces of Germany in Munich. MIRIAM combines all research programs within the ARCHIMEDES development program, and is currently planned for launch to a 200km peak altitude from the SSC ESRANGE rocket test site near Kiruna, North Sweden on top of the REXUS4 sounding rocket managed and built by the DLR Moraba group of Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

Launch is now planned for October 21, 2008.

To obtain more information please feel free to direct inquiries to
either hg@marssociety.de or hannes.griebel@unibw.de.