Success
Trailblazer 1g
Test Flight
National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA)Government
Trailblazer 1
Suborbit
An experiment where an actual 'artificial meteorite' was flown. This was a 5.8 g steel pellet, which was driven into the atmosphere at 6 km/sec by a 'seventh stage', a shaped charge that accelerated the pellet after burnout of the rocket's six stage. This experiment provided a known reference by which the size of actual meteoroids could be measured according to the luminance of their trails.
Friday, April 21, 1961 at 5:56 AM
Mission details
NASA Mission
#25
Pad Launch
#1
Location Launch
#11
Launch Window
NET
Apr 21, 1961, 5:56 AM
Schedule Changes
1 update
Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA
Wallops Flight Facility is a rocket launch site on Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, United States, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and north-northeast of Norfolk. The facility is operated by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and primarily serves to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other federal agencies. WFF includes an extensively instrumented range to support launches of more than a dozen types of sounding rockets; small expendable suborbital and orbital rockets; high-altitude balloon flights carrying scientific instruments for atmospheric and astronomical research; and, using its Research Airport, flight tests of aeronautical research aircraft, including uncrewed aerial vehicles.
Timezone
America/New_York
Local Launch Time
Apr 21, 1961, 12:56 AM
Total Launches
86
Total Landings
0
Coordinates
37.9333, -75.4678
Trailblazer 1 Specs
American test vehicle. The rocket's first three stages would take the upper stage package to a 260 km apogee. The upper stage package was mounted upside-down in relation to the other stages. When it had reached the peak, the three upper stages fired in sequence, ramming the payload, a 13 cm sphere, into the atmosphere at orbital re-entry speeds.
Length
17.1 m
Diameter
0.58 m
Launch Mass
3 t
Thrust
365 kN
Reusable
No
Maiden Flight
1959
Total Launches
1
Successful
1
Failed
0
Consecutive Success
1
Maiden flight: Mar 3, 1959
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. NASA have many launch facilities but most are inactive. The most commonly used pad will be LC-39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Founded
1958
Administrator
Administrator: Jared Isaacman
Total Launches
142
Successful
122
Failed
20
Pending
5
Consecutive Success
12