Aerobee
| Aerobee 100 | Aerobee 150 | Aerobee 170 | Aerobee 200 | Aerobee 350 | Aerobee Hi | |
| Maximum Altitude | 102 miles | 189 miles | 210 miles | 290 miles | 348 miles | 170 miles |
| Acceleration | 15.2 G | 10.3 G | 12.4 G | 12.4 G | 15.2 G | 10.3 G |
| Weight Without Payload | 1,470 pounds | 1,941 pounds | 1,850 pounds | 2,027 pounds | 6,800 pounds | 2,050 pounds |
| Maximum Payload Capability | 200 pounds | 500 pounds | 550 pounds | 550 pounds | 900 pounds | 150 pounds |
| Length | 25.75 feet | 29.67 feet | 31 feet | 32 feet | 57 feet | 31 feet |
| Diameter | 15 inches | 15 inches | 15 inches | 15 inches | 22 inches | 15 inches |
The Aerobee rocket family was one of the oldest rocket firing programs at White Sands Missile Range and was officially introduced into service on 24 November 1947. Hundreds of Aerobees were launched to varying heights over White Sands in research projects designed to gather upper-atmospheric solar and stellar data.
Aerobee was designed as an expendable ballistic rocket capable of transporting a scientific payload to high altitudes. It was a boosted vehicle using a solid propellant booster and a liquid fuel sustainer. The liquid propellants were Red Fuming Nitric Acid as an oxidizer and Furfuryl Alcohol Aniline as fuel. The fluids were forced into the sustainer thrust chamber by 3,450 pounds per square inch of helium gas pressure, where they combust rapidly. Both the sustainer and the booster burned simultaneously at lift-off and were position-mated by nothing more than the overriding thrust of the booster.
The Aerobee had no guidance system. The fins were preset to give a slight spin that could be seen as the rocket left the tower. Spin was induced to furnish aerodynamic stability during flight.
The payloads or experiments carried aboard the Aerobees could be incredibly varied. Each rocket could carry as many as six different experiments, each independent of the other. Cameras, vacuum bottles, mirrors, grids, sensing devices, lenses, and many other mechanical units have been carried aloft and returned to Earth. Most of the data collected is transmitted by telemetry from the rocket to ground receiving stations during flight and is recorded simultaneously with event occurrence.
An interesting feature of the Aerobee is that the rocket does not fly like an arrow but continues up until the zenith is reached and then falls tail first until the denser atmosphere is reached. The rocket then inverts and continues its descent in a normal ballistic trajectory. After separation of the nose cone from the sustainer, but prior to parachute deployment, the nose cone either tumbles or goes into a flat spin, depending on what has been programmed.
Impact predictions are based on the wind velocity and direction at launch time and are accomplished by tilting the launch tower in a compensating direction. The tower sits on a tripod which has one leg hinged. The other two are hydraulically powered for extension or retraction.
The entire nose cone, with exposed film, can be recovered in excellent condition through the use of a parachute. Some of the nose cones were flown a dozen times with only a minimal amount of servicing between each flight.
The Aerobee family of rockets were designated by their capable altitude in miles and included: Aerobee 100, Aerobee 150, Aerobee 170, Aerobee 200, Aerobee 350, and Aerobee Hi. The Aerobees were built primarily by Aerojet’s Space General Company and were tested at White Sands by the Naval Ordnance Missile Test Facility.
The Aerobee 350 was an unguided and boosted vehicle designed to carry net payloads weighing between 150 and 900 pounds to altitudes of 294 and 148 miles, respectively, when launched from Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, sea-level at elevation angles of 80 to 88 degrees. Launched from 4,000-foot altitude at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, this is increased to 313 and 159 miles, respectively.
This sounding rocket was designed by the Space General Division of the Aerojet-General Corporation for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with the intent of using the existing 160-foot Aerobee towers at Wallops Island and White Sands Missile Range.
The Aerobee 350 has a cluster of four standard Aerobee thrust chambers, identical to the chambers used in the Aerobee 150. Firing simultaneously, the chambers delivered an average 18,844 pounds of vacuum thrust for 52.2 seconds. Acceleration increased slowly after booster burnout to a peak of 15.2 G’s. A Nike M5E1 booster substantially increased the rocket’s performance, allowing for greater acceleration, speeds, ranges, and altitudes.
Being a boosted single-stage vehicle, the Aerobee 350 had definite advantages in simplicity and reliability over multi-stage vehicles with similar capabilities. Engineering of the Aerobee 350 began in mid-1962 with design goals that included weight reduction, higher reliability, simplicity of operation and increased performance.
The Aerobee 350 research rocket was launched from the standard four-rail Aerobee tower, such as is used for the Aerobee 150. The vehicle rode along the rails by means of pads on the vehicle that restrain vehicle pitch, yaw, and roll while it was in the tower.
Motion commenced after ignition of the booster, resulting in an initial acceleration of 6.5 G’s with a 150-pound payload. Sustainer operation was activated by a lanyard and reached full operating pressure at 0.6 seconds. The booster and sustainer operated simultaneously with an average acceleration of 8.4 G’s. With this acceleration, the vehicle exited the tower at 1.2 seconds.
When booster thrust had decreased to the point that it produced less net acceleration than the sustainer, the booster dropped away at approximately 3.2 seconds. The vehicle’s nominal speed at this point is around 753 feet per second. The sustainer continued to burn until the oxidizer was exhausted, occurring around 52.8 seconds. The Aerobee 350 could reach a maximum velocity of 9,138 feet per second after burnout at approximately 165,000 feet, after which the payload would coast to a peak altitude of about 294 miles. Impact time was around 700 seconds and the impact distance from the launch tower was approximately 131 miles.
The Aerobee 350 came with a parachute recovery system that was similar to the Aerobee 150’s payload recovery system, allowing the payload section to drift back to earth at low velocity and increasing the chance that the instrumentation could be used for later missions. With its increase in size and capabilities, the Aerobe 350 could carry relatively large payloads. These could include larger telescopes and mass spectrometers or smaller instruments that measured upper-atmospheric micrometeorites, air-glow spectra, electromagnetic waves, radiation, ion composition, stellar spectra, and aurorae.
The first Aerobee 350 vehicle, NASA 12.02, was launched in December 1964. This test vehicle consisted of a live booster with inert liquids in the sustainer. The purpose of this flight was to verify the compatibility of the Aerobee 350 vehicle and the Aerobee launching tower at Wallops Flight Facility. Additionally, program engineers sought to substantiate booster propulsion operation and sustainer start sequence operation, including pressurization. All mission objectives were realized with the exception of sustainer recovery due to a recovery system malfunction.
The first completely operation Aerobee 350 was NASA 17.01 GT, launched from Wallops Island in June 1965. This vehicle carried a 367-pound diagnostic payload to verify operation and design characteristics, enabling program engineers to collect data on its post-launch vehicle environment, such as payload pressurization, external radiation activity, and temperatures. All mission objectives were met or exceeded and the flight was considered extremely successful. Following this launch, the Aerobee 350 was considered operational and available for scientific flight.
