The History of Sounding Rockets and Their Contribution to ... - ESA

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- ESRO’s sounding-rocket programme
- national launches, starting in 1963, and performed since 1967 by the Mobile Raketen Basis (MORABA),
a Department of the DLR Operations Centre specialised in providing mobile launch support for soundingrocket/balloon
launch campaigns all over the World.
MORABA, consisting of a team of about 30-50 staff, has for about 40 years been one of the World’s most
experienced and best-equipped sounding-rocket/balloon launching organisations.
Germany’s national programme used predominantly the ranges at Esrange, Andøya, El Arensillo and Natal.
The activities performed by MORABA under national and partly bilateral sounding-rocket/balloon campaigns
are the following:
- campaign operations
- rocket-motor fl ight preparation
- radar tracking
- telemetry/telecommand coverage (TM/TC)
- rocket/payload recovery operations
- sounding-rocket/balloon fl ight analysis
- project coordination
- fl ight-system provision and operation (service systems for TM/TC and video transmission, recovery systems,
rate- and attitude-control systems)
- payload and rocket data processing
- balloon launches.
After the termination of ESRO’s sounding-rocket activities in 1972, Germany’s national activities were
increased and organised into various categories, i.e. topic-based research programmes for the in-depth study
of specifi c scientifi c problems, such as the:
- Aeronomy programme known as the Western Winter Anomaly Campaign, an integrated sounding-rocket,
balloon and ground observation campaign involving 22 German research groups. Under this campaign,
47 sounding rockets and 23 balloons were launched, mainly from the El Arensillo and Andøya ranges.
- Astronomy campaign, during which in the period 1973 to 1977 twelve sounding rockets (Skylark, Black
Brant and Aries) were launched from El Arensillo, Woomera and White Sands. This campaign addressed
X-ray sources (e.g. Crab Nebula and galactic X-ray sources), UV star photometry and UV measurements
of the Sun.
- International Magnetosphere Study (IMS), including in the period 1976-1978 a campaign called Porcupine
involving the launching of four large Aries sounding rockets from Esrange and four Skylark-12’s
from Andøya. This activity was coordinated with electromagnetic-fi eld measurements performed by two
geostationary satellites (GEOS and ATS-F).
Similar science campaigns under which sounding-rocket experiments were performed followed in the 1980s
and 1990s in the fi eld of ionospheric research.
In the fi rst 35 years (1963-1998) of the German national sounding-rocket programme, some 300 fl ights
were launched. About 40% of them were from Esrange/Kiruna and 20% from Andøya/Norway. This strong
German programme contributed to the stability and survival of the Scandinavian launch bases. Other large
European countries like France and the United Kingdom predominantly used their own launch ranges.
Furthermore, German scientifi c groups participated in many sounding-rocket fl ights launched by other
countries, such as the USA, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the USSR,
India, etc. The number of these joint fl ights is estimated to be at least twice that of national launches. For
example, in 1968 the number of cooperative, national and ESRO-launched sounding-rocket fl ights with
German experiments onboard was as follows: