2-THE CAROLINA TIMES—SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12. 1991
Sounding Rockets Carry
Science Into Space
By William G. Schulz
Smithsonian News Service
WHITE SANDS MISSILE
RANGE, N.M. — A round
burst of fire, followed by the
deep thunder of a sonic boom,
recently marked another rocket
launch at this Defense
Department test facility, a flat
expanse of desert that sprawls
north 100 miles from the city of
Las Cruces.
This launch, however, was not
involved with the nation’s
d.-fense. It was a NASA
.■funding rocket, which, for five
precious minutes in space,
Uowed an onboard telescope to
ipture unique X-ray images of
wsun.
Approximately 30 times a
year, the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration
launches sounding rockets,
many from the White Sands
fxility. Other nations with
'.ounding rocket programs
hide Great Britain, Australia,
anada, Brazil and the Soviet
mion.
' ''ou; 15 different rockets —
names like Nike, Taurus
. 'id Aires — make up the
V ■ 'A soundiiij, jket fleeL
;bf na-Tie "sounding” is taken
’.otii the nautical t "sound,"
which means to take
fueasurements from the sea.
Sounding rockets take
measurements from the upper
atmosphere and beyond.
On this particular occasion, a
Terrier Black Brant sounding
rocket carried the specially
designed telescope for Dr. Leon
Golub, an astrophysicist at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory in Cambridge,
Mass. With this and other
iaunches, Golub hopes to
■
compile detailed X-ray images
of the solar corona and learn
more about processes that occur
in this turbulent, outer layer of
our sun.
Golub’s research continues
the Smithsonian’s historic
involvement with the
development and use of
sounding rockets. The idea for
these rrxrkets in the LFnited
States began with physicist and
rocket pioneer Dr. Robert
Goddard, says Frank Winter, a
curator in the space history
department at the National Air
and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C, In 1916,
Goddard approached the
Smithsonian Institution to fund
his research.
Three years later, the
Smithsonian issued Goddard’s
report on solid-fuel rockets, "A
Method of Reaching Extreme
Altitudes," which established
his reputation as a rocket
pioneer. Goddard’s early days
are recounted in a new txxjk by
Winter, Rockets Into Space,
published in 1990 by Harvard
University Press.
To obtain funding for his
research, Goddard knew that he
needed first to sell the idea of
studying the upper atmosphere
with rockets. "Politically, it was
easier for Goddard to sell this
idea," Winter says, "because the
idea of space flight was just too
way out at that time."
Goddard’s contact at the
Smithsonian was Dr. Charles
Greeley Abbot, then assistant
secretary of the institution and
director of the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory.
Abbot championed Goddard’s
work because of his own keen
interest in studying
T - 1
Smithsonian News Service Photo courtesy SAO/iBM Research
A telescope flown above New Mexico, aboard a NASA sounding rocket, captured this X-ray image of
the sun. The picture was taken during a solar eclipse in July 1991. The X-ray data are part of a study of
the sun’s corona by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, JV ss.
"meteorological problenis such
as the composition and
temperature of the upper
atmosphere as well as
phenomena of solar physics.
Winter says. Balloons could not
fly high enough for this work.
Later, Goddard obtained
research funds from other
organizations, including the
U.S. Weather Bureau and the
Carnegie Institution. These
organizations added collecting
air samples, studying cosmic
rays and measuring magnetic
intensities to Abbot’s list of
phenomena that sounding
rockets might be used to
explore.
Ultimately, Winter says,
Goddard’s career was spent
developing liquid-fuel
propulsion systems for rockets.
He did launch one rocket in
1929, which carried two small
instruments aboard but also
ruptured its gasoline fuel tank
upon landing. Big leaps in
modem rocketry did not happen
again until the 1940s, e.spccially
by the end of World War II
.when Germany had developed
the large-scale V-2 liquid-fuel
rocket. After the war, the
United States captured
Germany’s V-2s. Moreover,
Germany’s rocket scientists
were broug' ' i America where
they helped lild the country’s
space program.
Today, NASA operates a
sounding rocket program from
its Wallops Flight Facility on
Wallops Island, Va. "It’s not
glamorous, but it’s a very useful
program for the dollar," Warren
Gurkin, head of the NASA
program, explains.
(Continued On Page 4)
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