Orion is the designation of a small 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 often ...

. The Orion has a length of 5.60 meters, a diameter of 0.35 m, a launch weight of 400 kg, a launch thrust of 7 kN and a ceiling of 85 kilometers. The Orion, built by

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

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, VA, Norfolk. The facility is operated ...

, is also used as an upper stage of sounding rockets, usually paired with a

Terrier Terrier () is a Dog type, type of dog originally bred to hunt vermin. A terrier is a dog of any one of many Dog breed, breeds or landraces of the terrier Dog type, type, which are typically small, wiry, Gameness, game, and fearless. There are fi ...

missile as the first stage, although Nike, Taurus and

VS-30 The VS-30 is a Brazilian sounding rocket, developed by the ''Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço'' and derived from the Sonda 3 sounding rocket first stage.

rockets are also used. Two Orion versions exist: * Orion, using a

Aerojet Aerojet was an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California, with divisions in Redmond, Washington, Orange and Gainesville in Virginia, and Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by GenCorp, ...

M22E8 dual-thrust motor (from the MIM-23A Hawk missile). * Improved Orion using a Aerojet M112 dual-thrust motor (from the MIM-23B I-Hawk missile). The sounding rocket is launched from Wallops Flight Facility, White Sands, Poker Flat Rocket Range, Andoya Rocket Range,

Esrange , , , , , , , , , Esrange Space Center is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the a ...

and Barreira do Inferno.

Incidents

A lightning storm over the Wallops launch pad on 9 June 1987 ignited a NASA Orion rocket and 2 other sounding rockets. The Orion flew horizontally about 300 feet into the ocean. The sounding rockets rose to around 15,000 feet altitude, then fell about 2 miles from the launch pad. No persons were hurt in the incident.Patricia Tanner, ''Update'',

Air & Space/Smithsonian ''Air & Space/Smithsonian'' was a quarterly magazine published by the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city an ...

, Vol. 2 No. 3 (August/September 1987), p. 21

Gallery

File:Orion-Original.jpg, Orion carrying experiments developed by students (June 8, 2006) File:Improved Orion Sounding Rocket Scheme-01.jpg, Improved Orion scheme File:Improved Orion Sounding Rocket-02.jpg, Improved Orion just after launch. File:Orion Sounding Rocket-03.jpg, Improved Orion launch

References

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