NASA Trailblazer 1g
Trailblazer 1
Status
Success
Date
21 APR 1961
05:56
Launch Provider
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Launch Pad
Unknown Pad
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA
Mission Overview
An experiment where an actual 'artificial meteorite' was flown. This was a 5.8 g steel pellet, which was driven into the atmosphere at 6 km/sec by a 'seventh stage', a shaped charge that accelerated the pellet after burnout of the rocket's six stage. This experiment provided a known reference by which the size of actual meteoroids could be measured according to the luminance of their trails.
Rocket
Trailblazer 1
Mission Type
Test Flight
Orbit
Suborbital
Stages
4
Livestream
Not availableRocket Details
American test vehicle. The rocket's first three stages would take the upper stage package to a 260 km apogee. The upper stage package was mounted upside-down in relation to the other stages. When it had reached the peak, the three upper stages fired in sequence, ramming the payload, a 13 cm sphere, into the atmosphere at orbital re-entry speeds.
Height
17.1 m
Diameter
0.58 m
Launch Mass
3 T
Thrust
365 kN