Space History for Dec 5: HEOS, Tamouz, Hubble, etc

[CalliArcale]

As a reminder, these features are slightly random. <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /> I put in items that caught my interest -- there are certainly other interesting things that happened on the chosen day, and if you know of any, feel free to add!<br /><br />December 5, 1946, the V-2 Solar mission launched from White Sands, NM. This was part of the ongoing V-2 program launching captured Nazi V-2 rockets to increase US expertise with rockets. This particular one reached an apogee of 153.2 km and carried a suite of experiments for the Naval Research Lab, testing cosmic and solar radiation, pressure, and temperature, and performing photography.<br /><br />December 5, 1958, a Navy Terrier rocket, specially modified for scientific purposes, was launched from Wallops Island. This was the first use of a Terrier as a sounding rocket. It produced a thousand-mile composite photograph of a frontal cloud formation, contributing to meteorology.<br /><br />Ten years later, in 1968, the HEOS 1 spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta E from Cape Canaveral. This was a European spacecraft called the Highly Eccentric orbiting Spacecraft. Eccentric indeed -- its orbit went from a perigee of 20,020 km to an apogee of 202,780 km, inclined 60.5 degrees. It provided valuable data on the Earth's magnetosphere and on the magnetic environment beyond -- the heliosphere -- by virtue of its elongated orbit. Despite its high orbit, HEOS 1 reentered the EArth's atmosphere in 1975.<br /><br />Perhaps the most unusual thing for this date happened in 1989, when Iraq performed a test launch of their Tamouz rocket from their Al Anbar launch facility. It reached an apogee of 50 km. It was the only test the vehicle would ever acheive. It was a stretched and clustered variant of the existing Scud-C rockets which became so infamous in the Persian Gulf War. Propellants were nitric acid and kerosene. The program ended when Canadian scientist Gerard Bull (who performed critical calculations and design w <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>