Solidification Furnace Developed for Sounding Rockets: Santa Branca Mission

Brazil has a Microgravity Program mainly based mainly on sounding rockets experiments. The Santa Branca Mission, aimed to qualify the Brazilian Suborbital Microgravity Platform (MQ-MSP). The group of the Coordination of Applied Research and Technological Development (COPDT) of the Brazilian Space Research Institute (INPE) participated with an experiment in a fast solidification furnace, capable of producing temperatures up to 900 °C, which was tested with semiconductor and metal alloys. This paper describes the construction and performance of this furnace during the last suborbital flight, the Santa Branca Mission, which took place in 2022. The solidification furnace is now qualified and ready to be used by other institutions for sounding rocket flights.