ALV X-1 was the first and only flight of the ATK Launch Vehicle (ALV)

sounding rocket A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are often ...

developed by

Alliant Techsystems Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK) was an American Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and arms industry, arms manufacturer headquartered in Arlington County, Virginia. The company operated across 22 states, Puerto Rico, and internationally. ATK reven ...

. The launch occurred from LP-0B at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Wallops Flight Facility Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) is a rocket launch site on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, United States, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and approximately north-northeast of Norfolk, VA, Norfolk. The facility is operated ...

. This mission carried the SOAREX-VI and Hy-BoLT experiments as payloads when it launched at 09:10 GMT on August 22, 2008. The vehicle was terminated 20 seconds into flight after veering too far off course.

Hy-BoLT

The Hypersonic Boundary Layer Transition (Hy-BoLT) experiment payload was sponsored by the

Hypersonic In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds five times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since i ...

s Project within the Fundamental Aeronautics Program of NASA. Hy-BoLT was a wedge-shaped payload that would have provided "valuable data on the fundamental physics of high-

Mach The Mach number (M or Ma), often only Mach, (; ) is a dimensionless quantity in fluid dynamics representing the ratio of flow velocity past a Boundary (thermodynamic), boundary to the local speed of sound. It is named after the Austrian physi ...

flight." It would have been launched to an altitude of , transmitting various temperatures and pressures on different parts of the vehicle's surface. During the flight, Hy-BoLT transmitted data as expected for the first 20 seconds until it was destroyed when the rocket was detonated.

SOAREX-VI

Sub-Orbital Aerodynamic Re-entry EXperiments VI (SOAREX-VI) was sponsored by the

s Project within the Fundamental Aeronautics Program of

, and developed by NASA's

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

. It was carried by the ALV X-1 as a secondary payload. SOAREX-VI would have attempted to characterize an innovative self-orienting reentry vehicle shape called the Slotted Compression RAMP (SCRAMP) probe. The SOAREX-VI package also included an atmospheric density calibration probe built by NASA Ames in cooperation with the

University of Idaho The University of Idaho (U of I, or UIdaho) is a public land-grant research university in Moscow, Idaho, United States. Established in 1889 and opened three years later, it was the state's sole university for 71 years, until 1963. The un ...

, and an AIS probe built by the

United States Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. Located in Washington, DC, it was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, appl ...

(NRL). After detonation of the rocket, the SOAREX-VI enclosure inside was broken open. The SCRAMP probe, designed to activate upon ejection, did exactly that and acquired two TDRSS satellites overhead and an

S-band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the convention ...

tracking dish on land. It transmitted sensor and video data until it was destroyed on

splashdown Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft or launch vehicle in a body of water, usually by parachute. This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with th ...

References

External links

NASATV launch video
* * {{Refend Sounding rockets of the United States Space accidents and incidents in the United States

Hy-BoLT

SOAREX-VI

See also

References

External links