FOR PRESS : 389

TEN ROCKETS FOR FIRING AT CARNARVON IN ' UPPER ATMOSPHERIC V/EATHER RESEARCH '  '

Statement "by the Minister for Supply, The Hon. Allen Fair hall

Ten rockets will he fired from the Carnarvon area in .

Western Australia within a 24-hour period during the first

week in May* '  Â·

This is announced today "by the Minister for Supply,

The Hon. Allen Fairhall.

The launchings.are part of a Department of Supply project  on upper atmosphere research and will he carried out hy a team

of scientists and technicians from the Weapons Research

Establishment, Salisbury, South Australia*

The results of this unique experiment will he co-ordinated

with a firing at Yvoomera. The scientific information obtained

will help advance the knowledge of the sun-earth relationship

and hence assist weather forecasting and space projects.

The firings may he viewed hy the public from a vantage

point at the Quohha Point lighthouse. The launching site will

he on the cliffs at Quohha Station, 30 miles north of the town

of Carnarvon. This site was used for a successful series of

rocket firings in October, 1964.

With the line of fire into the north-west, the rockets

will plunge 30 miles away into the Indian Ocean.

It is planned that the series of 10 rocket launchings Ã¢ÂÂ

will determine the changes which occur within a day in the

upper atmosphere. There has been evidence, at heights of

sixty miles and above, of large tidal motions which cause

the atmosphere to surge from the west during one part of the

day, and reversing its direction later.

Re-acting violently to the sun’s radiation, the upper  atmosphere may he the indicator which will help solve the

problem of how the lower atmosphere re-acts, so forming the

weather, .  Ã¢ÂÂ

The experiment is known as the falling sphere experiment,

in which an inflatable sphere is ejected from the rocket at a

height of 80 miles. - —  -

The sphere is made from metallized plastic, thinner than

a human hair, and similar to that used in the communications

satellite, ECHO. .

As each sphere falls down through the atmosphere, it will

he tracked hy the powerful radar equipment at Carnarvon ,

Tracking Station. This radar was used in tracking of the

recent succesful Gemini spaceflight, when RASA astronauts

Virgil Grissom and John Young, circled the earth in a space

capsule. /o

2 -

Prom the radar plot of the falling spheres, the winds,

pressures, temperatures and densities of the upper atmosphere

may "be. determined, .

It is planned to start firing the series of ten rockets

at 3 p.m. one afternoon early in May, and to complete the

firing "by 3 p.m* the following day. .' .

Woomera Skylark reaches 100 miles altitude

Mr. Pairhall also said today that another Skylark Research

Socket had "been successfully fired at i.hs Wo oner a Range in

South Australia. This was the third successful firing in a

series of rockets carrying the RAP/Elliott Bros, attitude

control unit to stabilise the motion of the rocket head so

that it always pointed accurately at the sun while the payload

was out of the earth1s atmosphereÂ» .

The payload consisted of instruments to study the.corona

of the sun in' the ultra-violet wavelengths for the United Kingdom

Atomic Energy Authority. The information on Solar Corona

was recorded on film and recovered "by parachute. Information

on the performance of the attitude control unit and the

Skylark rocket was telemetered hack to Woomera and recorded

there on magnetic tape.

The payload, which also contained X-ray experiments for

Leicester University (Eng,), reached a height of 100 miles

above the range, and initial reports indicated that the

experiment was successful and that equipment operated

satisfactorily.

The trial was sponsored by the United Kingdom Minister

of Science and was organised by the Weapons Research

Establihsment within the Department of Supply,

CANBERRA .  .

April 15* 1965 - P .M,

