The Mesquito is an American

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 used to ...

vehicle developed for the

NASA Sounding Rocket Program The NASA Sounding Rocket Program (NSRP) is a NASA run program of sounding rockets which has been operating since 1959. The missions carried out by this program are primarily used for scientific research, particularly low gravity and material bas ...

on Wallops Island,

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. The Mesquito was developed to provide rocket-borne measurements of the

mesospheric The mesosphere (; ) is the third layer of the atmosphere, directly above the stratosphere and directly below the thermosphere. In the mesosphere, temperature decreases as altitude increases. This characteristic is used to define its limits: it ...

region of the upper atmosphere. An area of great science interest is in the 82–95 km region, where the conventional understanding of atmospherics physics is being challenged. The Mesquito is a two-stage sounding rocket using a solid propellant rocket motor from surplus M26 MLRS artillery rocket as the first-stage. The non-propulsive second-stage

dart Dart or DART may refer to: * Dart, the equipment in the game of darts Arts, entertainment and media * Dart (comics), an Image Comics superhero * Dart, a character from ''G.I. Joe'' * Dart, a ''Thomas & Friends'' railway engine character * Dar ...

contains a free-flying structural body that includes an avionics suite and an experiment space with interface. The maiden flight occurred on 6 May, 2008, from LC-2 at the

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. The facility is operated by the Goddard ...

. After three test launches, the project was shelved.

Launch history

References

* Sounding rockets of the United States {{rocket-stub