The NOTS Air-Launched Satellites Programme

J. W. Powell. (1997), JBIS, 50, pp.433-440

Refcode: 1997.50.433

Abstract:

Engineers and scientists at the Naval Ordnance Test Station, responsible for developing rocket-based weapons for the U.S. Navy at a sprawling proving ground located al China Lake. California, had already been thinking of satellite or suborbital ocean surveillance systems before the Soviet Sputnik appeared on October 4, 1957. Spurred on by a desire to put up their own satellite in response to Sputnik, NOTS rocketeers designed a solid-fuelled booster that could place a primitive television scanner satellite into low-Earth orbit. The design team wanted to use solid propellant motors from the Sergeant missile (developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California) to propel their satellite.