Via National Geographic: a homemade spacecraft launched today:
Private spaceflight took one giant step forward this week when the Tycho Brahe craft lifted off atop the HEAT-1X rocket engine Friday (pictured) from a platform in the Baltic Sea.
A group of Danish volunteers launched the homemade spacecraft from the floating platform Sputnik, located near the Danish island of Bornholm (see map), according to the Copenhagen Post.
During its test flight, Tycho Brahe reached a height of 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers), the Post reported. The eventual goal is be to send the craft nearly a hundred miles (160 kilometers) into space, or about halfway to the International Space Station.
Named after a 16th-century Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe (TEE-ko brah) holds one person—or, as in Friday’s test flight, one crash-test dummy.
Rocket developers Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, who both have spacecraft and rocket-engineering experience, founded the nonprofit Copenhagen Suborbital to pave the way for manned spaceflight on a “micro size” spacecraft such as Tycho Brahe.
More about nonprofit Copenhage Suborbitals from their site:
Copenhagen Suborbitals is a suborbital space endeavor, based entirely on private donaters, sponsors and part time specialists
Our mission is to launch human beings into space on privately build rockets and spacecrafts.
The project is both open source and non-profit in order to inspire as many people as possible, and to envolve relevant partners and their expertise.
We aim to show the world that human space flight can be different from the usual expensive and government controlled project.
We are working fulltime to develop a series of suborbital space vehicles – designed to pave the way for manned space flight on a micro size spacecraft.
The mission has a 100% peacefull purpose and is not in any way involved in carrying explosive, nuclear, biological and chemical payloads.
We intend to share all our techninal information as much as possible, within the laws of EU-export control.