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The Petrel was a British sounding rocket. The Petrel 1 was launched, like the
The Petrel was a British sounding rocket. The Petrel 1 was launched, like the Skua
The skuas are a group of predatory seabirds with seven species forming the genus ''Stercorarius'', the only genus in the family Stercorariidae. The three smaller skuas, the long-tailed skua, the Arctic skua, and the pomarine skua are called ...
1, with 3 Chick booster rockets. The Chick motors were fitted into a Booster Carriage that also carried the two parachutes that brought it back to earth for re-use. The Petrel 1 was 3.34 m long, had a diameter of 19 cm and reached a maximum altitude of 140 kilometres. It was fired from a barrel launcher approximately .
The Petrel was first flown on 8 June 1967 in South Uist
South Uist ( gd, Uibhist a Deas, ; sco, Sooth Uist) is the second-largest island of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. At the 2011 census, it had a usually resident population of 1,754: a decrease of 64 since 2001. The island, in common with the ...
. Since 1968, some 234 Petrels have been launched from sites in South Uist, Andeya, Kiruna, Thumba
Thumba is a coastal area of Thiruvananthapuram city, the capital of Kerala, India.
Location and geography
Thumba is a vast village bordering Menamkulam in the east, St. Dominic's Vettucaud in the north, and Kochuthura in the south; towards its ...
, Sonmiani Somiani ( ur, ) is a coastal town in the southeast of Balochistan province in Pakistan, approximately 145 kilometres northwest of Karachi. The coast of Sonmiani is the northernmost point of the Arabian Sea. The Sonmiani Beach is one of the most po ...
and Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland i ...
. Around 2/3 of the launches have taken place from South Uist. In 1977 an improved version, the Petrel 2, with a maximum height of 175 kilometres was used for the first time. The Petrel was also fired from ESRANGE at Kiruna in Sweden in 1971, and from the range on Andoya, an island off the Norwegian coast in 1973. One launcher was installed at Kiruna, while two were installed on Andoya. Both could be loaded, but only one was elevated at a time. Two launchers allowed successive firings, one as an event came up and another as it decayed. The programme of Petrel Iaunchings ceased in August 1982.
To facilitate one experiment, a Petrel payload released gas clouds at apogee. The wife of one of the firing team members reported that strange lights were being seen in the night sky from Scotland.
Petrel 1
* payload: 18 kg *maximumaltitude
Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...
: 140 km
*launch thrust
Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that sys ...
: 20 kN
*launch weight
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force acting on the object due to gravity.
Some standard textbooks define weight as a vector quantity, the gravitational force acting on the object. Others define weight as a scalar qua ...
: 130 kg
*diameter: 0.19 m
*length: 3.34 m
Petrel 2
*payload: 18 kg *maximum altitude: 175 km *takeoff thrust: 27 kN *takeoff weight: 160 kg *diameter: 0.19 m *length: 3.70 mSee also
* Sounding rocket X-ray astronomyReferences
External links
*https://web.archive.org/web/20050207182449/http://www.univ-perp.fr/fuseurop/skupe_e.htm *https://web.archive.org/web/20080708220750/http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/petrel.htm Sounding rockets of the United Kingdom {{Rocket-stub