MW 18014 was a German
A-4 test rocket launched on 20 June 1944,
at the
Peenemünde Army Research Center
The Peenemünde Army Research Center (german: Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (''Heereswaffenamt''). Several German guided missiles and ...
in
Peenemünde
Peenemünde (, en, "Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The communi ...
. It was the first man-made object to reach
outer space
Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, pred ...
, attaining an
apogee
An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion.
General description
There are two apsides in any ellip ...
of 176 kilometers (109.3 miles), which is well above the
Kármán line
The Kármán line (or von Kármán line ) is an attempt to define a boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space, and offers a specific definition set by the Fédération aéronautique internationale (FAI), an international record-keeping ...
.
It was a vertical test launch. Although the rocket reached space, it did not reach
orbital velocity, and therefore returned to Earth in an impact, becoming the first
sub-orbital spaceflight
A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...
.
Background
Early A-4 rockets, despite being able to reach altitudes of 90 km, had suffered from multiple reliability issues.
For example, a design fault in the forward part of the outer hull caused it to regularly fail mid-flight, resulting in the failure of up to 70% of test launches.
On one occasion, an A-4 rocket suffering from
pogo oscillation
Pogo oscillation is a self-excited vibration in liquid-propellant rocket engines caused by combustion instability. The unstable combustion results in variations of engine thrust, causing variations of acceleration on the vehicle's flexible structu ...
s during ascent veered 90 degrees off course then spiralled back down to its launch pit, killing four launch troops on site.
The Peenemünde rocket team made a number of improvements to rectify the reliability issues during 1943 and the first half of 1944. Hindering the program were
constant interference from the
SS, Allied raids as part of
Operation Hydra, attempts to privatise the program in June 1944,
and a two-week detention of technical director
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...
on 15 March 1944.
Allied advances in Northern France and improvements to the
Mittelwerk
Mittelwerk (; German for "Central Works") was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flying ...
underground facility, where the A-4 rockets were produced, and improvements to the liquid propellant formula placed renewed emphasis on Von Braun to address the A-4's reliability issues.
Records broken
MW 18014 was part of a
series of vertical test launches made in June 1944 designed to gauge the rocket's behaviour in vacuum.
MW 18014 broke the altitude record set by one of its predecessors (launched on 3 October 1942
[ English translation 1954.]) to attain an apogee of 176 km.
MW 18014 was the first man-made object to cross into outer space, as defined by the 100 km
Kármán line
The Kármán line (or von Kármán line ) is an attempt to define a boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space, and offers a specific definition set by the Fédération aéronautique internationale (FAI), an international record-keeping ...
. This particular altitude was not considered significant at the time; the Peenemünde rocket scientists rather celebrated test launch V-4 in October 1942, first to reach the
thermosphere
The thermosphere is the layer in the Earth's atmosphere directly above the mesosphere and below the exosphere. Within this layer of the atmosphere, ultraviolet radiation causes photoionization/photodissociation of molecules, creating ions; the ...
.
After the war, the
World Air Sports Federation
In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...
(FAI) defined the boundary between
Earth's atmosphere
The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...
and
outer space
Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, pred ...
to be the Kármán line.
A subsequent A-4/V-2 launched as part of the same series of tests would break MW 18014's record, with an apogee of 189 km. The date of that launch is unknown because rocket scientists did not record precise dates during this phase.
Notes
See also
*
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...
, first orbital space flight, October 4, 1957
*
Albert II, first mammal in space, June 14, 1949
*
Vostok 1
Vostok 1 (russian: link=no, Восток, ''East'' or '' Orient'' 1) was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first human orbital spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA space capsule was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Apr ...
, first manned space flight, April 12, 1961
References
{{Portal, Spaceflight, Germany, Politics
Spacecraft launched in 1944
1944 in Germany
V-weapons
Wernher von Braun
Space programme of Germany
Short-range ballistic missiles
Spaceflight before 1951