National Academies Press: OpenBook

Sounding Rockets: Their Role in Space Research (1969)

Chapter: Notable Scientific Results of Rocket Research

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Suggested Citation:"Notable Scientific Results of Rocket Research." National Research Council. 1969. Sounding Rockets: Their Role in Space Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12400.
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Introduction In the Spring of l968, the Space Science Board's Committee on Rocket Research undertook to examine the status of research using sounding rockets and to evaluate scientific progress made since the Board's last examination of the subject in l965*. The Committee was interested in reassessing the role of rockets in a balanced space research program, the effectiveness of rocket programs for graduate education, and in isolating major scientific questions most likely to be resolved by sounding rocket techniques. Atten- tion was given to technological and fiscal problems. Committee members surveyed a large percentage of scientists actively engaged in rocket research in the United States and Canada. Government agencies involved in sounding rocket operations briefed the Committee on the status, plans, and fiscal outlook of their programs. This report draws heavily on material supplied by these sources. The Committee's recommenda- tions, which appear at the end of the report, are directed toward increasing the effectiveness of rocket research within the context of a balanced space program. Notable Scientific Results of Rocket Research Since rockets were first equipped with scientific instruments over twenty years ago to probe the upper air and space, they have accounted for or contributed to discoveries of major scientific and practical significance. A few of these discoveries are mentioned below. A more detailed summary of rocket findings from l965 to l968 is included in the Appendix. The Earth's atmosphere is completely opaque to wavelengths shorter than about 3000 A; rockets provided the first means of directly examining this portion of the spectrum. Observations of the solar ultraviolet spectrum were first notably extended beyond the limit detectable at the Earth's surface by means of a spectrograph on V-2 rocket in l946, and one of the earliest tri- umphs of rocket solar astronomy was the discovery of solar x rays originat- ing in the million-degree corona. Over the years, knowledge of the solar spectrum has steadily increased as the observable limit has been extended from approximately 2200 A in the early V-2 measurements, through the line- emission region, and into x-ray wavelenghts. By l950 the solar spectrum had been broadly mapped and the outlines of the mechanisms by which solar ionizing radiations produce and control the ionosphere were discernable. In recent years, satellites too have monitored the various emission levels, but the principal characteristics of the emissions, so important to our understanding of the Sun and the upper atmosphere, were identified from rocket data. *"Rocket-Satellite Research," Chapter 7 in Space Research: Directions for the Future, Report of a Study by the Space Science Board, Woods Hole, Mass., l965, Nat. Acad. Sci.-Nat. Res. Coun. Pub. l403, Washington, D. C., l966

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