"Baby" rocket, the eve of sounding rockets in Japan
- Paper ID
IAF-01.IAA-2.3.03
- author
- company
The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
- country
Japan
- year
2001
- abstract
The first rocket launch site in Japan was established in 1955 in a northern part of the country, and was named Akita Rocket Range, where the early generations of Japanese sounding rockets (Pencil, Baby and Kappa) were launched over Japan Sea. The rocket team of University of Tokyo developed the techniques of staging, telemetry and recovery by the Baby series, which served to bridge a gap between Pencil and Kappa. This paper describes the technical details of three types of Baby rockets (S,T and R), and the feature of the age just before full-fledged sounding rockets were to be developed in Japan in the latter half of 1950s.