Saphir VE231 (French, meaning ''sapphire'') was a French
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 ...
. It was part of the "''pierres précieuses''" ("precious stones") family of launch vehicles. Saphir was used between 1965 and 1967 and had a payload capacity of . The rocket could reach a maximum altitude of and produced thrust of at launch. Saphir had a launch mass of , a diameter of and a length of .
Saphir was launched 15 times, from July 5, 1965, to January 27, 1967. The
Diamant
The Diamant rocket (French for "diamond") was the first exclusively French expendable launch system and at the same time the first satellite launcher not built by either the United States or USSR. As such, it has been referred to as being a key ...
rocket, which carried the first French satellite,
Asterix-1, into orbit, was developed from the Saphir with the addition of a third stage. After the successful launch of Diamant, Saphir rockets were used to test technologies for France's burgeoning
intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapo ...
development—namely radio and
inertial guidance
An inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation device that uses motion sensors ( accelerometers), rotation sensors ( gyroscopes) and a computer to continuously calculate by dead reckoning the position, the orientation, and the velocity ...
, warhead separation, and ablative
heat shield
In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is al ...
ing of a
re-entry vehicle.
See also
*
French space program
The French space program includes both civil and military spaceflight activities. It is the third oldest national space program in the world, after the Soviet (now Russian) and American space programs, and the largest space program in Europe.
B ...
*
Veronique (rocket)
References
{{Reflist
Experimental rockets
Sounding rockets of France
Space launch vehicles of France