Downrange, or down range, is the horizontal distance traveled by a

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...

, or the spacecraft's horizontal distance from the launch site. More often, it is used as an adverb or adjective specifying the direction of that travel being measured in a horizontal direction. In

military slang Military slang is an array of colloquial terminology used commonly by military personnel, including slang which is unique to or originates with the armed forces. In English-speaking countries, it often takes the form of abbreviations/acronyms or d ...

, ''downrange'' is a term for being deployed overseas, usually in a war zone. It is also the name of a

comic strip A comic strip is a Comics, sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often Serial (literature), serialized, with text in Speech balloon, balloons and Glossary of comics terminology#Captio ...

published in the newspaper Stars and Stripes. It can also refer to the direction of fire: away from the source and in the direction of the target. In the 1960s and 1970s, a down range tracking system existed at Gulkula, in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

of Australia, to track rockets launched from the

Woomera Test Range The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a S ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

References

Spaceflight concepts {{spacecraft-stub