sounding rocket
noun
: a rocket used especially to obtain information concerning atmospheric conditions at various altitudes
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the Web The suborbital launch on a Black Brant sounding rocket reached an apogee of 243 km. 
Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 8 July 2022 The sounding rocket campaign’s aim is to determine whether the high-radiation environment around nearby sunlike stars would strip any potentially earthlike planets of their atmospheres on timescales of only a few million years. Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 14 May 2022 In its own post, NASA wrote that the next rocket launch from Wallops is a NASA sounding rocket mission targeted for January 2022. Julia Musto, Fox News, 23 Oct. 2021 Black Brant XII, carrying the KiNET-X payload, is a four-stage sounding rocket that can reach altitudes over 200 miles above Earth's surface, according to NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Kelly Powers, USA TODAY, 7 May 2021 At an undisclosed time, a Department of Defense sounding rocket is scheduled to depart the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Washington Post, 2 Mar. 2021 This article has been updated to reflect the creation of a BEC on board a sounding rocket in 2017 by Germany's MAIUS 1 (Matter-Wave Interferometry in Microgravity) experiment. Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 15 June 2020 In April 2021, the team plans to launch a sounding rocket carrying the Beam Plasma Interactions Experiment, a miniature accelerator that would create a beam of electrons, which in turn would generate VLF waves capable of sweeping up particles. Richard Stone, Science | AAAS, 26 Dec. 2019 Conditions on Mars are far colder, and the ascent vehicle’s exposure time will be far longer than, say, sounding rockets launched into Earth’s aurora borealis from inside the Arctic Circle. Robin George Andrews, Scientific American, 6 Feb. 2020 See More
Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 8 July 2022 The sounding rocket campaign’s aim is to determine whether the high-radiation environment around nearby sunlike stars would strip any potentially earthlike planets of their atmospheres on timescales of only a few million years. Bruce Dorminey, Forbes, 14 May 2022 In its own post, NASA wrote that the next rocket launch from Wallops is a NASA sounding rocket mission targeted for January 2022. Julia Musto, Fox News, 23 Oct. 2021 Black Brant XII, carrying the KiNET-X payload, is a four-stage sounding rocket that can reach altitudes over 200 miles above Earth's surface, according to NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Kelly Powers, USA TODAY, 7 May 2021 At an undisclosed time, a Department of Defense sounding rocket is scheduled to depart the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Washington Post, 2 Mar. 2021 This article has been updated to reflect the creation of a BEC on board a sounding rocket in 2017 by Germany's MAIUS 1 (Matter-Wave Interferometry in Microgravity) experiment. Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 15 June 2020 In April 2021, the team plans to launch a sounding rocket carrying the Beam Plasma Interactions Experiment, a miniature accelerator that would create a beam of electrons, which in turn would generate VLF waves capable of sweeping up particles. Richard Stone, Science | AAAS, 26 Dec. 2019 Conditions on Mars are far colder, and the ascent vehicle’s exposure time will be far longer than, say, sounding rockets launched into Earth’s aurora borealis from inside the Arctic Circle. Robin George Andrews, Scientific American, 6 Feb. 2020 See More Word History
First Known Use
circa 1945, in the meaning defined above