Sounding Rocket Flights
The first sounding rocket flights for X-ray research were accomplished at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico with a V-2 rocket on January 28, 1949. A detector was placed in the nose cone section and the rocket was launched in a suborbital flight to an altitude just above the atmosphere.
X-rays from the Sun were detected by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Blossom experiment on board. An Aerobee 150 rocket was launched on June 12, 1962 and it detected the first X-rays from other celestial sources (Scorpius X-1).
The largest drawback to rocket flights is their very short duration (just a few minutes above the atmosphere before the rocket falls back to Earth) and their limited field of view. A rocket launched from the United States will not be able to see sources in the southern sky; a rocket launched from Australia will not be able to see sources in the northern sky.
Read more about this topic: X-ray Astronomy
Famous quotes containing the words sounding, rocket and/or flights:
“The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“A rocket is a reed that thinks brilliantly.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)