ESAÕs Maxus 4 sub-orbital microgravity mission launched on 29 April from ESRANGE, near Kiruna in northern Sweden. During the last two years, scientists from five European countries have been working together with the engineering teams from Astrium GmbH and the Swedish Space Corporation in preparation for the Maxus 4 mission, of the European Space Agency. The Maxus-4 rocket carried a payload of seven experiments stacked in five self-contained modules. They were designed to investigate phenomena in fluid physics and materials science that are difficult or impossible to observe on Earth.
The Maxus 4 flight was designed to provide weightlessness to the experiments for the duration of about 12.5 minutes. On its flight, the payload was planned to reach an apogee of 710km. On the down-leg, at an altitude of 6km the main parachute would be deployed to ensure the safe landing of the Maxus 4 payload at a distance of about 80km down-range. It was to be brought back by helicopter, normally within one hour after impac

00:00:47 Damaged parachute being loades into helicopter
00:02:30 Pilot placing fixation rope under the helicopter
00:03:00 Journalists
00:03:29 Helicopter takes off with part of payload underneath, but lands again shortly after
00:07:15 Journalitsts by second helicopter
00:07:42 Recovery helicopter leaves without payload, heads towards launch site
00:08:32 Interior of helicopter during flight
00:10:08 Helicopter lands at ESRANGE
00:10:34 Per Baldemar inspecting part of payload brought back by recovery helicopter
00:11:11 Wolfgang Herfs ESA""s Sounding ROcket Project Manager with some recovered parts of payload, incl Professor Frohberg, TU Berlin
00:11:48 A recovered camera from the foam module
00:12:20 Recovery helicopter leaves to pick up more of the payload
00:14:39 END