Naval Research Laboratory Satellites 1960-1989
£5.00
J. McDowell. (1997), JBIS, 50, pp.427-432
Refcode: 1997.50.427
Abstract:
The US Navy’s Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC has been involved in space exploration since the V-2 rocket test at White Sands in the late 1940s. These were followed by Aerobee flights and the development of NRL’s Viking sounding rocket, which grew into the Vanguard satellite launch vehicle. NRL’s Vanguard programme ended in 1959 with the launch of the third successful Vanguard satellite. However, NRL has remained active in space research ever since, and recently developed and operated the Clementine space probe which mapped the Moon in 1994. In this article I explore Vanguard’s successors and Clementine’s antecedents, in an attempt to illuminate NRL’s continuous history of ‘smaller, faster, better’.
