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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 often used to launch instruments from nasa.gov NASA Sounding Rocket Program Handbook, June 2005, p. 1 (
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Archive link, December 2024) above the surface of the Earth, the altitude generally between and ; the maximum altitude for balloons is about and the minimum for satellites is approximately .
Due to their suborbital flight profile, sounding rockets are often much simpler than their counterparts built for orbital flight. Certain sounding rockets have an apogee between , such as the Black Brant X and XII, which is the maximum apogee of their class. For certain purposes, sounding rockets may be flown to altitudes as high as to allow observing times of around 40 minutes to provide geophysical observations of the magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere.
Sounding rockets have utilized balloons, airplanes, and artillery as "first stages." Project Farside utilized a Rockoon composed of a balloon, lifting a four-stage rocket composed of 4 Recruit rockets as the first stage with 1 Recruit as the second stage, with 4 Arrow II motors composing the third stage and finally a single Arrow II as the fourth stage. Sparoair, air launched from Navy F4D and F-4 fighters were examples of air launched sounding rockets. There were also examples of artillery-launched sounding rockets, including Project HARP's 5", 7", and 15" guns, sometimes having additional Martlet rocket stages. BRL Memorandum Report No. 1825
The earliest attempts at developing sounding rockets were in the Soviet Union. While all of the early rocket developers were concerned largely with developing the ability to launch rockets, some had the objective of investigating the stratosphere and beyond. The first All-Union Conference on the Study of Stratosphere was held in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1934. While the conference primarily dealt with balloon Radiosondes, there was a small group of rocket developers who sought to develop "recording rockets" to explore the stratosphere and beyond. Sergey Korolev, who later became the leading figure of the Soviet space program, gave a presentation in which he called for "the development of scientific instruments for high-altitude rockets to study the upper atmosphere."Asif A. Siddiqi (2025). 9780160613050, NASA History Division, Office of Policy and Plans. . ISBN 9780160613050
V. V. Razumov, of the Leningrad Group for the Study of Jet Propulsion, had a specific interest in sounding rocket design. As did A. I. Polyarny, who worked in a special group within the Society for Assistance to the Defense, Aviation and Chemical Construction of the U.S.S.R. in Moscow, and designed the R-06, which eventually flew, but not in the meteorological role.
The early Soviet efforts to develop a sounding rocket ultimately failed before WWII. P. I. Ivanov built a three-stage which flew in March 1946. At the end of summer 1946, development ended because it lacked sufficient thrust to loft a sufficient research payload.
The first successful sounding rocket was created at the California Institute of Technology, where before World War II there was a group of rocket enthusiasts led by Frank Malina, under the aegis of Theodore von Kármán, known amidst the people of the CIT as the "Suicide Squad." Their immediate goal was to explore the upper atmosphere, which required developing the means of lofting instruments to high altitude and recovering the results. After the start of WWII, the CIT rocketry enthusiasts found themselves involved in a number of defense programs, one of which was intended to produce a bombardment-guided missile, the Corporal. Eventually known as the MGM-5 Corporal it became the first guided missile deployed by the US Army.
During WWII, the Signal Corps created a requirement for a sounding rocket to carry of instruments to or higher. To meet that goal Malina proposed a small Liquid-propellant rocket to provide the GALCIT team necessary experience to aid in developing the Corporal missile. p11 Malina with Tsien Hsue-shen (Qian Xuesen in Pinyin transliteration), wrote "Flight analysis of a Sounding Rocket with Special Reference to Propulsion by Successive Impulses." As the Signal Corps rocket was being developed for the Corporal project, and lacked any guidance mechanism, it was Without Attitude Control. Thus it was named the WAC Corporal. The WAC Corporal served as the foundation of Sounding Rocketry in the USA. WAC Corporal was developed in two versions, the second of which was much improved. After the war, the WAC Corporal was in competition for sounding mission funding with the much larger captured V-2 rocket being tested by the U.S. Army. WAC Corporal was overshadowed at its job of cost-effectively lifting pounds of experiments to altitude, thus it effectively became obsolescent. WAC Corporals were later modified to become the upper stage of the first two-stage rocket the RTV-G-4 Bumper.
Captured V-2s dominated American sounding rockets and other rocketry developments during the late 1940s. To meet the need for replacement a new sounding rocket was developed by the Aerojet to meet a requirement of the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory. Over 1,000 Aerobees of various versions for varied customers were flow between 1947 and 1985. One engine produced for the Aerobee ultimately powered the second stage of the Vanguard (rocket), the first designed for the purpose Satellite Launch Vehicle, Vanguard. The AJ10 engine used by many Aerobees eventually evolved into the AJ10-190 which formed the Orbital Maneuvering System of the Space Shuttle.
The Viking (rocket) was intended from the start by the Navy not only to be a sounding rocket capable of replacing, even exceeding the V-2, but also to advance guided missile technology. The Viking was controlled by a multi-axis guidance system with gimbled Reaction Motors XLR10-RM-2 engine. The Viking was developed through two major versions. After the United States announced it intended to launch a satellite in the International Geophysical Year (1957–1958) the Viking was chosen as the first stage of the Vanguard Satellite Launch Vehicle. The last two Vikings were fired as Vanguard Test Vehicle 1 and 2.
During the post-WWII era, the USSR also pursued V-2 base sounding rockets. The last two R-1As were flown in 1949 as sounding rockets. They were followed between July 1951 and June 1956 by 4 R-1B, 2 R-1V, 3 R-1D and 5 R-1Es, and 1 R-1E (A-1). The improved V-2 descendant the R-2A could reach 120 miles and were flown between April 1957 and May 1962. Fifteen R-5Vs were flown from June 1965 to October 1983. Two R-5 VAOs were flown in September 1964 and October 1965. The first solid-fueled Soviet sounding rocket was the M-100. Some 6640 M-100 sounding rockets were flown from 1957 to 1990.
Other early users of sounding rockets were Britain, France, and Japan.
Great Britain developed the Skylark (rocket) series and the later Skua for the International Geophysical Year.
France had begun the design of a Super V-2 but that program had been abandoned in the late 1940s due to the inability of France to manufacture all components necessary. Though development of the Veronique (rocket) began in 1949, it was not until 1952 that the first full-scale Veronique was launched. Veronique variants were flown until 1974. The Monica (rocket) family, an all solid-fueled which was pursued in a number of versions and later replaced by the ONERA. series of rockets.
Japan was another early user with the Kappa (rocket). Japan also pursued Rockoons.
The People's Republic of China was the last nation to launch a new liquid-fueled sounding rocket, the T-7. It was first fired from a very primitive launch site, where the "command center" and borrowed power generator were in a grass hut separated from the launcher by a small river. There was no communications equipment- not even a telephone between the command post and the rocket launcher. The T-7 led to the T-7M, T-7A, T-7A-S, T-7A-S2 and T-7/GF-01A. The T-7/ GF-01A was used in 1969 to launch the FSW satellite technology development missions. Thus the I-7 led to the first Chinese satellite, the Dong Fang Hong 1 (The East is Red 1), launched by a DF-1. Vital to the development of Chinese rocketry and the Dong Feng-1 was Qian Xuesen (Tsien Hsue-shen in Wade Guiles transliteration) who with Theodore von Kármán and the California Institute of Technology "Suicide Squad" created the first successful sounding rocket the WAC Corporal.
By the early 1960s, the sounding rocket was considered established technology.
Sounding rockets have been used for the examination of atmospheric nuclear tests by revealing the passage of the shock wave through the atmosphere.
In more recent times, sounding rockets have been used for other nuclear weapons research.
Common meteorological rockets are the Loki and Super Loki, typically 3.7 m tall and powered by a 10 cm diameter solid fuel rocket motor. The rocket motor separates at an altitude of 1500 m and the rest of the rocketsonde coasts to apogee (highest point). This can be set to an altitude of 20 km to 113 km.
George Sutton (2025). 9781563476495, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. ISBN 9781563476495
Advantages
Sounding rockets are advantageous for some research because of their low cost (often using military surplus rocket motors), relatively short lead time (sometimes less than six months) and their ability to conduct research in areas inaccessible to either balloons or satellites. They are also used as test beds for equipment that will be used in more expensive and risky orbital spaceflight missions. The smaller size of a sounding rocket also makes launching from temporary sites possible, allowing Field research at remote locations, and even in the middle of the ocean, if fired from a ship.
Applications
Meteorology
Weather observations, up to an altitude of 75 km, are done with rocketsondes, a kind of sounding rocket for atmosphere observations that consists of a rocket and radiosonde. The sonde records data on temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, wind shear, atmospheric pressure, and air density during the flight. Position data (altitude and latitude/longitude) may also be recorded.
Research
Sounding rockets are commonly used for:
Dual use
Due to the high military relevance of ballistic missile technology, there has always been a close relationship between sounding rockets and military missiles. It is a typical dual-use technology, which can be used for both civil and military purposes.DeVorkin, Science With A Vengeance, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1992, ISBN 0-387-94137-1 During the Cold War, the Federal Republic of Germany cooperated on this topic with countries that had not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty on Nuclear Weapons at that time, such as Brazil, Argentina and India. In the course of investigations by the German peace movement, this cooperation was revealed by a group of physicists in 1983. The international discussion that was thus set in motion led to the development of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) at the level of G7 states. Since then, lists of technological equipment whose export is subject to strict controls have been drawn up within the MTCR framework.
Operators and programs
See also
External links
(2025). 9780967410609, Small Rocket Press. ISBN 9780967410609
(2025). 9789290925507, ESA Publications Division. ISBN 9789290925507
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.*
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