A rocket is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely from propellant carried within the vehicle; therefore a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space. Rockets work more efficiently in a vacuum and incur a loss of thrust due to the opposing pressure of the atmosphere.
A solid-propellant rocket or solid rocket is a rocket with a rocket engine that uses solid propellants (fuel/oxidizer). The earliest rockets were solid-fuel rockets powered by gunpowder; they were used in warfare by the Chinese, Indians, Mongols and Persians as early as the 13th century.
A hybrid-propellant rocket is a rocket with a rocket motor that uses rocket propellants in two different phases: one solid and the other either gas or liquid. The hybrid rocket concept can be traced back to the early 1930s.
A model rocket is a small rocket designed to reach low altitudes and be recovered by a variety of means.
A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to launch instruments from 48 to 145 km above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between weather balloons and satellites; the maximum altitude for balloons is about 40 km and the minimum for satellites is approximately 121 km. Certain sounding rockets have an apogee between 1,000 and 1,500 km, such as the Black Brant X and XII, which is the maximum apogee of their class. Sounding rockets often use military surplus rocket motors. NASA routinely flies the Terrier Mk 70 boosted Improved Orion, lifting 270–450-kg (600–1,000-pound) payloads into the exoatmospheric region between 97 and 201 km.
High-power rocketry is a hobby similar to model rocketry. The major difference is that higher impulse range motors are used. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) definition of a high-power rocket is one that has a total weight of more than 1,500 grams (3.3 lb) and contains a motor or motors containing more than 125 grams (4.4 oz) of propellant and/or rated at more than 160 Newton-seconds of total impulse, or that uses a motor with an average thrust of 80 newtons (18 lbf) or more.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), established in 1989, is the aeronautics and space agency of South Korea. Its main laboratories are located in Daejeon, in the Daedeok Science Town. KARI's vision is to continue building upon indigenous launch capabilities, strengthen national safety and public service, industrialize satellite information and applications technology, explore the Moon, and develop environmentally-friendly and highly-efficient cutting-edge aircraft and core aerospace technology. Current projects include the KSLV-2 launcher. Past projects include the 1999 Arirang-1 satellite. The agency was founded in 1989. Prior to South Korea's entry into the Institute for Advanced Engineering (IAE) in 1992, it focused primarily on aerospace technology.
The Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI) was formed 1991 with the merger of the AUSROC Launch Vehicle Development Group at Monash University, Melbourne and the Australian Space Engineering Research Association (ASERA).
Amateur rocketry, sometimes known as experimental rocketry or amateur experimental rocketry, is a hobby in which participants experiment with fuels and make their own rocket motors, launching a wide variety of types and sizes of rockets. Amateur rocketeers have been responsible for significant research into hybrid rocket motors, and have built and flown a variety of solid, liquid, and hybrid propellant motors.
Romanian Cosmonautics and Aeronautics Association, also known as ARCAspace, is an aerospace company based in Râmnicu Vâlcea, Romania. It builds rockets, high-altitude balloons, and unmanned aerial vehicles. It was founded in 1999 as a non-governmental organization in Romania by the Romanian engineer and entrepreneur Dumitru Popescu and other rocket and aeronautics enthusiasts. Since then, ARCA has launched two stratospheric rockets and four large-scale stratospheric balloons including a cluster balloon. It was awarded two governmental contracts with the Romanian government and one contract with the European Space Agency. ARCASpace is currently developing a three-stage, semi-reusable steam-powered rocket called EcoRocket and in 2022 has shifted its business model to Asteroid mining.
El Arenosillo Test Centre (CEDEA) is the name of a rocket launch site for suborbital rockets managed by INTA, located near Mazagón in Spain. It is located in the province of Huelva, Andalucía, in the southwest coast of Spain (37.1° N, 6.7° W). CEDEA is adjacent to the Center of Excellence for Unmanned Systems (CEUS).
RocketMotorTwo (RM2) is a family of hybrid rocket engines developed for the Scaled Composites SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane.
Nitrous oxide fuel blend propellants are a class of liquid rocket propellants that were intended in the early 2010s to be able to replace hydrazine as the standard storable rocket propellent in some applications.
Rocket propellant is the reaction mass of a rocket. This reaction mass is ejected at the highest achievable velocity from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical rocket, or from an external source, as with ion engines.
The Advanced Rocket Research Center is a Taiwanese space transport research organization headquartered at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, with a research focus in hybrid rockets. Founded in April 2012, ARRC is supported by research grants and private donors through crowdsourcing platforms.
Zero 2 Infinity is a private Spanish company developing high-altitude balloons intended to provide access to near space and low Earth orbit using a balloon-borne pod and a balloon-borne launcher.
The Scientific Workgroup for Rocketry and Spaceflight (WARR) is a scientific workgroup situated at Technical University of Munich, composed mainly of its students. It was founded by students in 1962 with the goal to compensate for the lack of a chair for space technology at the university at the time. Since the establishment of such a chair in 1966, the group has conducted practical projects, starting with the first successful development and of a hybrid rocket in Germany. One rocket of this type was launched in 1972, another is on permanent display at Deutsches Museum. WARR has attained some public attention by for its projects in space elevator competitions, small satellites interstellar spaceflight concepts, and for winning all SpaceX Hyperloop pod competitions.
WIRES is a Japanese project developing a winged single-stage reusable suborbital rocket as a test bed for a reusable orbital launch system or a crewed suborbital spaceplane. The full-size prototype, called WIRES-X, is expected to be launched in 2020.
The Kuwait Space Rocket (KSR), is a Kuwaiti project to build and launch the first suborbital liquid bi-propellant rocket in Arabia. The project is intended to be the first step towards starting a space industry in the country and a launch service provider in the GCC region. The project is divided into two phases with two separate vehicles. An initial testing phase with KSR-1 as a test vehicle capable of reaching an altitude of 8 km (5.0 mi) and a more expansive suborbital test phase with the KSR-2 planned to fly to an altitude of 100 km (62 mi). in May 16 Ambition-1 launched but had a malfunction with the parachute and crashed in free fall.
BluShift Aerospace is an employee-owned American aerospace firm based in Brunswick, Maine. Targeting the growing smallsat and cubesat launch markets, bluShift is developing suborbital sounding rockets and small-lift orbital rockets which will be launched from a proposed new spaceport in Maine. The company has received primary funding from NASAs SBIR grant program, the National Science Foundations I-Corps grant program, the Maine Technology Institute, and the Maine Space Grant Consortium. The company has active operations at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station and Loring Air Force Base.
