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The Petrel was a British
The Petrel was a British 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 ...
. The Petrel 1 was launched, like the Skua 1, with 3 Chick
Chick or chicks may refer to:
*Chick (young bird), a bird that has not yet reached adulthood
People
* Chick (nickname), a list of people
* Chick (surname), various people
* Chick McGee, stage name of radio personality Charles Dean Hayes (born 19 ...
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. Since 1968, some 234 Petrels have been launched from sites in South Uist, Andeya, Kiruna
(; se, Giron ; fi, Kiiruna ) is the northernmost Stad (Sweden), city in Sweden, situated in the province of Lapland, Sweden, Lapland. It had 17,002 inhabitants in 2016 and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality (population: 23,167 in 2016) in Norr ...
, Thumba, Sonmiani and Greenland. 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
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 ...
: 18 kg
*maximum altitude: 140 km
*launch thrust: 20 kN
*launch weight: 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