Sounding Rockets
The Small Sounding Rocket Program (SSRP), initiated in the mid-1990s, provides Australian educational institutions with a low cost payload launch service. The service has expanded to include to individuals, companies, foreign universities and non-commercial organisations seeking assistance to launch their own vehicles.
Launches are conducted twice a year from Woomera, South Australia. Two types of rockets are used:
- Sighter, a solid fuel rocket capable of launching a 3 kg payload to an altitude of 5.9 km at speeds over Mach 1, and
- Zuni, a solid fuel rocket capable of launching a heavier payload to an altitude of approximately 7 km, and reaching speeds of Mach 2.5.
Read more about this topic: Australian Space Research Institute
Famous quotes containing the words sounding and/or rockets:
“The irresponsive silence of the land,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Speak both one message of one sense to me:—
‘Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof,”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. After the war, everyone had a car—no wings for it—and the promised superhighway to drive it down, so that the sky itself darkened, and the fumes ate the marble and pitted the miracle crystal.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)