Sounding Rockets
A sounding rocket, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The origin of the term comes from nautical vocabulary, where to sound is to throw a weighted line from a ship into the water to gauge the water's depth. Sounding in the rocket context is equivalent to taking a measurement.
The rockets are used to carry instruments from 50 to 1,500 kilometres (31 to 930 mi) above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between weather balloons and satellites (the maximum altitude for balloons is about 40 kilometres (25 mi) and the minimum for satellites is approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi)). Certain sounding rockets, such as the Black Brant X and XII, have an apogee between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometres (620 and 930 mi); 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 kilograms (600–990 lb) payloads into the exoatmospheric region between 100 and 200 kilometres (62 and 120 mi).
Read more about Sounding Rockets: Design, Advantages, Research Applications, Operators and Programmes, Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words sounding and/or rockets:
“The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me:—
‘Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof,”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. After the war, everyone had a car—no wings for it—and the promised superhighway to drive it down, so that the sky itself darkened, and the fumes ate the marble and pitted the miracle crystal.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)