On this day in space! May 2, 2005: Maser 10 launches on final flight of Skylark rocket

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On May 2, 2005, the Skylark sounding rocket launched on its 441st and final flight.

On May 2, 2005, the Skylark sounding rocket launched on its 441st and final flight. Skylark was a British sounding rocket designed to carry European research experiments into the upper atmosphere and beyond the boundary of space.

On May 2, 2005, the British Skylark sounding rocket was successfully launched carrying the Maser 10 mission for the European Space Agency. (Image credit: SSC)

One biology experiment studied the way microgravity affects metabolism in cells from mammals. The other looked at a protein that affects inflammation and immunity in humans.

The physics experiments investigated how microgravity affects the evaporation, thermal radiation and convection in liquids. Maser 10 carried these experiments to an altitude of 155 miles, or 93 miles above the atmosphere, where the rocket experienced six minutes of weightlessness.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.