Hypersonic delivery
NASA's sounding rockets carry science instruments at 4,000 mph — and sometimes even faster
A reminder if you're going outside in the local area, or even in any part of the eastern United States, just remember that if you're listening to this, there's probably a delay, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 seconds to one minute. So just take that into account as you go outside. And again, take some photos if you're able to see the launch and post them so we can see what you're seeing.
A NASA SOUNDING ROCKET would carry the KiNET-X experiment skyward.
What is a sounding rocket?
Sounding rockets carry scientific instruments into space but don’t go into orbit. They go up and come down.
Their time in space is usually five to 20 minutes.
“There are some important regions of space that are too low for satellites and thus sounding rockets provide the only platforms that can carry out measurements in these regions,” the website of NASA’s Sounding Rockets Program reads.
A chart of the various types of sounding rocket types launched by NASA. Chart from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility
The program is headquartered at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
NASA has 14 types of sounding rocket, from the diminutive Improved Orion at just under 20 feet to the 65-foot, four-stage Black Brant XII used in Delamere’s experiment. The Black Brant XII can produce about 70,000 pounds of thrust, 2½ times that of an Air Force F-16 fighter jet.
NASA launches about 20 sounding rocket missions annually in the fields of astrophysics, heliophysics, geospace physics, solar system exploration and microgravity research. Missions are often in partnership with universities.
Sounding rockets trace their lineage back to Robert Goddard, for whom the Goddard Space Flight Center is named.
This June 2021 aerial photograph shows the coastal launch range at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Photo courtesy of Patrick J. Hendrickson via NASA.
Goddard did not specifically launch what today is known as a sounding rocket, but he is often credited with pioneering the liquid-fueled rocket technology that made sounding rockets and other forms of space exploration possible. He launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts.
Precursors to modern sounding rockets include the repurposed German V-2 rockets, which the United States first launched for scientific purposes shortly after World War II in 1946. These captured V-2 rockets carried scientific instruments into the upper atmosphere, marking the beginning of scientific exploration using rockets.
“The beauty of the sounding rocket is that it is a highly focused experiment that goes up and comes down and gives you vertical profiles,” Pfaff said. “You can have very large instruments that need a lot of power and a lot of telemetry.”
The advent of satellites hasn’t changed the necessity of the sounding rocket program.
“The program serves the nation and NASA very well in astronomy, in solar science and in geospace research,” Pfaff said. “And people develop instruments on sounding rockets that they then fly on orbiting satellites.
“It's an extremely popular program for scientists who want to get their research into space,” he said. “It's also quick, and they are very good for students and for training.”
When did the University of Alaska become involved with NASA’s sounding rockets?
A 1971 NASA sounding rocket history includes an extensive list of launches from 1958 through 1968, with the earliest one involving the University of Alaska occurring on Dec. 5, 1967, at Fort Churchill, Canada. The university’s Poker Flat Research Range didn’t come into existence until 1969.
Poker Flat Reserach Range north of Fairbanks, Alaska. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat and operates it under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, which is part of the Goddard Space Flight Center.
The Fort Churchill launch, according to a list in a 1971 NASA history of the sounding rocket program, was for an “auroral studies” experiment. The “overall flight result” is listed as successful.
Funding for that aurora research was originally designated for the experimental X-15 rocket-powered aircraft, but those high-altitude flights were later discontinued. The X-15 was a joint effort by the Air Force, Navy and NASA, then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.
A 1973 Geophysical Institute report to NASA by Associate Professor Wallace Murcray recounts the numerous launches under that refocused program.
“First rockets launched under this grant were three Nike-Apaches fired from Ft. Churchill in November 1965,” the report states. “These were followed by three Nike-Tomahawks in December 1967 and February 1968 and two Nike-Tomahawks in February 1970, all from Ft. Churchill, Manitoba.”
“Final rockets in the program were two Nike-Tomahawks launched from the University of Alaska's Poker Flat Rocket Facility, Chatanika, Alaska,” it adds.
The space agency has been launching sounding rockets since the 1970s using six locations — three in the United States and one each in Australia, the Marshall Islands and Norway. It used the Fort Churchill facility until 1985, when the site closed.
U.S. sites today consist of Wallops Flight Facility, the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. The UAF Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located north of Fairbanks on the Steese Highway, and operates it under a contract with Wallops.
Although Poker Flat is routinely used for rockets carrying instruments to study the aurora, Wallops provided the preferred science environment for Delamere’s auroral experiment.
“We wanted a quiet ionosphere,” Delamere said. “Launching from Poker you never know what you get, because we have aurora at these latitudes, and we didn’t want that. We wanted a very, very stable atmospheric configuration.”
Top photo shows a Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket on March 7, 2016. Photo courtesy of NASA Wallops Flight Facility
