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.
The Black Brant is a family of Canadian-designed sounding rockets originally built by Bristol Aerospace, since absorbed by Magellan Aerospace in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Over 800 Black Brants of various versions have been launched since they were first produced in 1961, and the type remains one of the most popular sounding rockets. They have been repeatedly used by the Canadian Space Agency and NASA.
The Churchill Rocket Research Range is a former rocket launch site located 23 kilometres (14 mi) outside Churchill, Manitoba. The facility was used by Canada and the United States beginning in 1954 for sub-orbital launches of sounding rockets to study the upper atmosphere. The site was scientifically beneficial due to lying in the center of a zone containing high aurora activity. Over 3,500 sub-orbital flights were launched from the site.
Bristol Aerospace is a Canadian aerospace firm located in Winnipeg, Manitoba and is an operating division of Magellan Aerospace. Today it is the only remaining and surviving subsidiary of Bristol Aeroplane Company.
Esrange Space Center is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the aurora borealis, sounding rocket launches, and satellite tracking, among other things. Located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle and surrounded by a vast wilderness, its geographic location is ideal for many of these purposes.
The Svalbard Rocket Range or SvalRak as it is named, is a launch site for sounding rockets at Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway. The site has been in use since 1997 and is owned by Andøya Space Center, which is owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries and the Kongsberg Group. SvalRak's location at the 79th parallel north makes it well-suited for launching rockets to investigate Earth's magnetic field. It is used mostly by American, Japanese and Norwegian researchers. It is the world's northernmost launch site.
Rick Brant is the central character in a series of 24 adventure and mystery novels by John Blaine, a pseudonym for authors Harold L. Goodwin and Peter J. Harkins. The series was published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1947 and 1968, with the previously unpublished title The Magic Talisman printed in 1990 in a limited edition as the concluding #24.
The brant or brent goose is a small goose of the genus Branta. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra.
A number of Suborbital spaceflights were conducted during 2008. These consist mostly of sounding rocket missions and missile tests, and include other flights such as an ASAT firing. Between the start of the year and 16 July, at least 43 publicly announced suborbital spaceflights were conducted, the first of them on 11 January.
The Barreira do Inferno Launch Center is a rocket launch base of the Brazilian Space Agency. It was created in 1965, and is located near Ponta Negra beach, near Natal, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Norte. It has been used for 233 launches from 1965 to 2007, reaching up to 1100 kilometers altitude.
A number of Suborbital spaceflights were conducted during 2009, consisting of sounding rocket missions and missile tests. Between the start of the year and 1 March, at least nine publicly announced suborbital spaceflights were conducted, the first of which occurred on 26 January.
The Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare, occurred on January 25, 1995 when a team of Norwegian and American scientists launched a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway. The rocket carried scientific equipment to study the aurora borealis over Svalbard, and flew on a high northbound trajectory, which included an air corridor that stretches from Minuteman III nuclear missile silos in North Dakota all the way to Moscow, the capital city of Russia. The rocket eventually reached an altitude of 1,453 kilometers (903 mi), resembling a US Navy submarine-launched Trident missile. Russian nuclear forces were put on high alert as a result, fearing a high-altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, and the "nuclear briefcase" was brought to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who then had to decide whether to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States. Russian observers determined that there was no nuclear attack. No retaliation was ordered.
Launch Complex A or LC-A at the Point Arguello Naval Air Station in California, United States, subsequently Point Arguello Launch Complex A or PALC-A at the Vandenberg Air Force Base, is a launch complex that was used for a number of sounding rocket launches between 1959 and 1966. It was originally built as Launch Complex A or LC-A at the Point Arguello Naval Air Station, and was subsequently transferred to Vandenberg Air Force Base as PALC-A following the merger of Point Arguello into Vandenberg AFB in 1964.
White Sands Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) is a site at White Sands Missile Range used for launches of the Black Brant IX and Black Brant 9CM1. It was also used from May 1964 and January 1966 to launch the Little Joe 2 rocket for the Apollo Program.
The Venus Spectral Rocket Experiment (VeSpR) was a suborbital rocket telescope that collected data on the ultraviolet (UV) light that is being emitted from Venus's atmosphere, which can provide information about the history of water on Venus. Measurements of this type cannot be done using Earth-based telescopes because Earth's atmosphere absorbs most UV light before it reaches the ground.
The Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER) was a payload flown aboard Black Brant XII sounding rockets to collect data about cosmic infrared background. In 2014 results from CIBER indicated an excess of infrared light, beyond what is emitted by galaxies.
This is a list of all the lists of rocket launches. That is, a list of articles that are lists of rocket launches.
