User:Schriste/NASA Sounding Rocket Program

The NASA sounding rocket program is led by the Sounding Rockets Program Office (SRPO), located at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility. It provides suborbital launch vehicles, payload development, and field operations support to NASA and other government agencies.

The NASA Sounding Rocket Program supports the NASA's strategic vision and goals for Earth Science, Heliophysics and Astrophysics. It supports about 20 sounding rocket flights each year. These flights provide researchers the build, test, and fly new instrument. Operations are conducted from fixed launch sites such as Wallops Test Range (Virginia), Poker Flat Research Range (Alaska), and White Sands Missile Range (New Mexico) as well as sites such as Andoya Rocket Range (Norway) and Esrange (Sweden). Launch operations are also conducted from mobile sites set up by the Wallops Test Range. Mobile "campaigns" have been conducted from Australia, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the Kwajalein Atoll. The mobile capability offered by the Wallops Test Range allows scientists to conduct their science "where it occurs". Coupled with a hands-on approach to instrument design, integration and flight, the short mission life-cycle helps ensure that the next generation of space scientists receive the training and experience necessary to move on to NASA’s larger, more complex space science missions. The cost structure and risk posture under which the program is managed stimulates innovation and technology maturation and enables rapid response to scientific events.

With the capability to fly higher than many low- Earth orbiting satellites and the ability to launch on demand, sounding rockets offer, in many instances, the only means to study specific scientific phenomena of interest to many researchers. Unlike instruments on board most orbital spacecraft or in ground-based observatories, sounding rockets can place instruments directly into regions where and when the science is occurring to enable direct, in-situ measurements. The mobile nature of the program enables researchers to conduct missions from strategic vantage points worldwide. Telescopes and spectrometers to study solar and astrophysics are flown on sounding rockets to collect unique science data and to test prototype instruments for future satellite missions. An important aspect of most satellite missions is calibration of the space-based sensors. Sounding rockets offer calibration and validation flights for many space missions, particularly solar observatories such as NASA’s latest probe, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), RHESSI, Hinode and SOHO.