El Arenosillo
El Arenosillo is a test site and research center of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA for short), founded in 1942 in Torrejón de Ardoz , near Madrid (German: National Institute for Aerospace Technology). The official name is Centro de Experimentación de El Arenosillo (CEDEA for short) and is located 2 kilometers southeast of Mazagón ( Huelva province , Spain ) directly on the Atlantic coast and offers the best weather conditions in Spain with around 300 days of sunshine a year.
El Arenosillo also became known as the launch site for sounding rockets for the Spanish space agency in Madrid. The first rocket launch from El Arenosillo took place on October 14, 1966. By 1994, El Arenosillo had launched 557 rockets - mainly of the Skua , Loki-Dart , Nike-Cajun , INTA-255 and INTA-300 types.
use
In addition to research, the site in El Arenosillo is also used for testing the certification of materials, components and systems in aerospace engineering. In addition to a self-sufficient infrastructure, INTA also operates a center for laboratory and weather balloons, a weather center with real-time information, reception of satellite data and extensive research on the ionosphere using an ion probe .
In recent years, the CEDEA site has become the most important test site not only for the Spanish Ministry of Defense, but is also used by the military test departments from Germany and the Netherlands, the European Space Agency ESA and the Italian space agency Agenzia Spaziale Italiana .
In 2008, the tests required for Eurocopter certification to test the Tiger HAD with the Spike guided missile were successfully carried out on the CEDEA site .
Trivia
Due to the military use, the area is only shown covered in publicly accessible satellite maps such as Google Maps.
swell
- Centro de Experimentación de El Arenosillo (Spanish; PDF file; 71 kB)
Web links
- INTA website (Spanish)
- Ionoprobe El Arenosillo
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eurocopter successfully conducts its first shooting campaign to test the Tiger HAD with the Spike guided missile. (No longer available online.) September 11, 2008, archived from the original on September 27, 2013 ; Retrieved September 22, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 37 ° 5 '37.3 " N , 6 ° 43' 23.9" W.