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The SHEFEX II sounding rocket vehicle comprised a two stage VS40 motor combination, whereby the first stage was passively aerodynamically stabilized by canted fins but the spinning second stage motor and payload, was repointed before ignition and controlled during its burn phase by a two axis, cold gas, precession attitude control system. The result was a suppressed trajectory with greatly reduced dispersion, which provided a significant increase in the time available for the re-entry thermal protection and canard guidance experiments and improved the possibility for down range tracking and data retrieval as well as sea recovery of the payload.

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The Mobile Rocket Base (MORABA), a division of the Space Operations and Astronaut Training Department of the German Aerospace Center, has developed and flown sounding rocket rate and attitude control systems since 1972. For determining position and attitude, some of the past missions have used a DMARS-R (Digital Miniature Attitude Reference System) roll stabilized platform produced by the Inertial Science Company. The DMARS-R is a high-precision, roll-stabilized IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) comprising accurate angular rate and acceleration sensors and mounted on a roll-stabilized platform. Standard IMUs are inherently subject to drift in inertial position, velocity and attitude. By the fusion of GPS and with DMARS-R data, one can achieves a long-term drift-corrected IMU enabling for longer duration flight applications, such as satellite launchers, spin stabilized rockets and balloons. The main experiment of the MAIUS mission, initially planned for autumn 2015, requires accurate pointing to the Earth's gravitational center.The required accuracy will be obtained by the fusion of DMARS-R and GNS data to produce "drift free" attitude data for the cold gas attitude control system of the payload. The attitude correction and control algorithm will be implemented in the DMARS-R processor.

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