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Blastoff

Photograph courtesy DLR

The German Aerospace Center’s unmanned SHEFEX II spacecraft takes off from the Andøya Rocket Range in Norway on June 22. Ten minutes later the 43-foot-tall (13-meter-tall) rocket landed safely west of Spitsbergen, Norway.

As it re-entered the atmosphere, SHEFEX (SHarp Edge Flight EXperiment) endured temperatures over 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit (2,500 degrees Celsius), and its 300 sensors sent measurement data to a ground station.

“The SHEFEX II flight takes us one step further in the road to developing a space vehicle built like a space capsule but offering the control and flight options of the space shuttle much more cost-effectively,” project manager Hendrik Weihs said in a statement.