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

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Research Programme, which included regular launches from Esrange. This Optional Programme was approved
in 1982 and the Netherlands immediately participated in it (as it still does today).
4.3.8 Early Norwegian sounding-rocket activities
Although Norway was never an ESRO Member State and joined ESA only in 1987, it was Norway that
started ionospheric research back in 1928, when the World’s fi rst auroral observatory was established in
Tromsö, north of the Arctic Circle.
This observatory conducted the fi rst ground-based ionospheric and radio-wave-propagation studies, because
long-distance radio communications were suffering blackouts during solar storms, when strong auroral
events occurred. These ionosphere-related studies were supported and reinforced in 1932/1933 during the
International Polar Year, when research groups from the USA, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom
cooperated with the Norwegians with the objective of understanding the physics of the ionosphere, which
seemed to refl ect or absorb long-distance radio waves depending on its changing physical properties.
During the Second World War, the German occupation forces continued these studies and established two
new ionospheric data centres in Tromsö and near Oslo, in order to support long-distance radio systems for
their navy and air force communications during the war. Shortly after the Second World War, the Cold War
started between the USA and the USSR and space technology became an important factor.
Norway joined Nato for security reasons, because it had a common border with the USSR in the Arctic
region and internationally-agreed joint administration of the Spitzbergen Islands, where more Soviet miners
lived than Norwegians.
The Soviets were keen to ensure that Norway remained as neutral as possible during the Cold War. The
prevailing climate of suspicion was one of the reasons why Norway hesitated to join ESA when it was set up
in 1973. At this time, both the Americans and the Soviets considered ionospheric research and radio-wave
communication to be of strategic importance, all the more so as intercontinental ballistic missiles armed
with atomic warheads were planned to cross the Norwegian part of the Arctic Sea in any military confl ict.
Besides the military interest in understanding disturbances to radio communications, the changing properties
of the ionosphere and the associated communication blackouts were also of economic importance
for Norway’s shipping and fi shing industries. Owing to the strategic importance of the polar region, Nato
Transport of a Dragon sounding rocket from the assembly hall to the launch pad at Andøya in 1967