A dart is a free flying top of a

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 ...

, and contains the

payload Payload is the object or the entity which is being carried by an aircraft or launch vehicle. Sometimes payload also refers to the carrying capacity of an aircraft or launch vehicle, usually measured in terms of weight. Depending on the nature of ...

. Its form is very

aerodynamically Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...

designed. After the launch stage burned out the dart is detached and continues to rise only with its own

inertia Inertia is the idea that an object will continue its current motion until some force causes its speed or direction to change. The term is properly understood as shorthand for "the principle of inertia" as described by Newton in his first law o ...

. Some sounding rockets are available both with or without dart. The version without dart is able to transport more payload, but reaches lesser height.

Applications

Mohr Rocket The Mohr Rocket was a sounding rocket developed by Ernst Mohr in Wuppertal, Germany. It was a single stage solid fuel rocket with: *a length of 1.7 metres, *a total mass of 150 kg (75 kg propellant), *a lift-off thrust of 76.5 ...

MMR06 The MMR06 is a Russian rocket for meteorological experiments, with a length of 3.48 metres and a total weight of 130 kg. The MMR06 rocket was built in two versions: One version had a conical top, the second one, named MMR06-M, had a detachabl ...

Hopi Dart Hopi-Dart was an American sounding rocket used by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center for aeronomy studies in the early 1960s. Design Hopi-Dart was a two-stage vehicle, combining a solid-fuelled Hopi III first stage with an unpowered Dart s ...

* Loki-Dart *

Meteor A meteoroid () is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are defined as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than this are classified as mic ...

Mesquito The Mesquito is an American sounding rocket vehicle developed for the NASA Sounding Rocket Program on Wallops Island, Virginia. The Mesquito was developed to provide rocket-borne measurements of the mesospheric region of the upper atmosphere. An ...

References

Meteorological instrumentation and equipment {{Rocket-stub