Author Topic: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility  (Read 19614 times)

Offline catdlr

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NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« on: 07/05/2016 10:14 pm »
What Is a Sounding Rocket?

Published on Jul 5, 2016
Learn more about suborbital sounding rockets and how they work!



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Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #1 on: 09/19/2016 09:17 pm »
Wallops Flight Facility: "This Island Called Wallops" 1965 NASA

Jeff Quitney

Published on Sep 19, 2016

"This film provides an overview of activities on Wallops Island, where the Wallops Flight Facility -- one of the oldest launch sites in the world -- tracking stations, long-range radar, and data processing capabilities made it a center for the support of space science research and development into orbital and sub-orbital payloads."

NASA film HQ-137

Sorry the quality of the original film to video transfer on this one is low, but few people know much about this substantial NASA facility.

Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) (IATA: WAL, ICAO: KWAL), located on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, is operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, primarily as a rocket launch site to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other U.S. government 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 unmanned aerial vehicles. There have been over 16,000 launches from the range at Wallops since its founding in 1945.

The WFF range supports science missions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and occasionally for foreign governments and commercial organizations... In addition to its fixed-location instrumentation assets, the WFF range includes mobile radars, telemetry receivers, and command transmitters... The WFF mobile range assets have been used to support rocket launches from locations in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, South America, Africa, Europe, Australia and at sea. Workers at Wallops include approximately 1,000 full-time NASA civil service employees and contractors, 30 U.S. Navy personnel, and 100 NOAA employees.

History

In 1945, NASA's predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), established a rocket launch site on Wallops Island under the direction of the Langley Research Center. This site was designated the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station and conducted high-speed aerodynamic research... In 1958, Congress established NASA, which absorbed Langley Research Center and other NACA field centers and research facilities. At that time, the Pilotless Aircraft Research Station became a separate facility - Wallops Station - operating directly under NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C... In 1974, the Wallops Station was named Wallops Flight Center. The name was changed to Wallops Flight Facility in 1981, when it became part of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

In the early years, research at Wallops concentrated on obtaining aerodynamic data at transonic and low supersonic speeds. Between 1959 and 1961, Project Mercury capsules were tested at Wallops in support of NASA's manned space flight program before astronauts were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Some of these tests using the Little Joe booster rocket were designed to flight-qualify components of the Mercury spacecraft, including the escape and recovery systems and some of the life support systems. Two rhesus monkeys, Sam and Miss Sam, were sent aloft as pioneers for astronauts; both were recovered safely.

Since 1945, the Wallops Test Range has launched more than 14,000 research vehicles in the quest for information on the flight characteristics of airplanes, launch vehicles, and spacecraft; and to increase the knowledge of the Earth's upper atmosphere and the near-space environment. The launch vehicles vary in size and power from the small Super Loki meteorological rockets to orbital-class vehicles...

Since 2001, engineers at NASA Wallops Flight Facility have been developing new range technologies, systems and approaches to improve the cost and responsiveness of launch and flight test activities, within the constraints of available funding and program schedules.

Specifically, NASA Wallops has been leading two range technology development projects: the Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) and the Low Cost TDRSS Transceiver (LCT2)...

Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.

Public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23YEheG728k?t=001

« Last Edit: 09/19/2016 09:17 pm by catdlr »
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Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #2 on: 12/02/2016 02:50 am »
and now for some history....

Wallops Early History: 1600-1940

NASAWallops

Published on Dec 1, 2016
NASA Employee T.J. Meyer, who has conductive extensive research on the history of Wallops Island and the main facility, discusses the history of Wallops from 1600-1940



Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #3 on: 12/02/2016 02:51 am »
History of Wallops Flight Facility 1941-1945

NASAWallops

Published on Dec 1, 2016
NASA Employee T.J. Meyer, who has conductive extensive research on the history of Wallops Island and the main facility, discusses the history of Wallops from 1941-1945.



Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #4 on: 12/16/2017 01:45 am »
bump for a year in review video...

Wallops 2017 Year in Review

published on Dec 15, 2017


From the busiest year, for our aircraft office to record attendance at our Visitors Center, 2017 has been an incredible year indeed. We highlight the year's accomplishments in this video and wish everyone a Happy Holidays!





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Online FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #5 on: 01/23/2018 12:36 pm »
Quote
Our first launch of the year! The Wallops sounding rocket team launched the Diffuse X-rays from the Local galaxy mission on a Black Brant IX sounding rocket at 7:17 a.m. EST, Jan. 19, from Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska. We have 28 sounding rocket launches planned for 2018!

https://twitter.com/NASA_Wallops/status/955794632482476032

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #6 on: 02/27/2018 08:22 pm »
Sounding Rocket Lecture Series, Part 1

NASAWallops
Published on Feb 27, 2018

What does it take to prepare for a suborbital sounding rocket flight? Eric Roper, a mission manager with Orbital ATK supporting the NASA sounding rocket program, discusses the mission life cycle of a sounding rocket from inception through launch and data retrieval.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45112.msg1793997#msg1793997
« Last Edit: 02/27/2018 08:24 pm by catdlr »
Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #7 on: 03/07/2018 08:30 pm »
Wallops Flight Facility: A Unique National Asset


NASAWallops
Published on Mar 7, 2018

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility provides agile, low-cost flight and launch range services to meet government and commercial sector needs for accessing flight regimes worldwide from the Earth's surface to the moon and beyond. Wallops' flight assets--research aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, high-altitude balloons, suborbital and orbital rockets--coupled with the facility's operational launch range and airfield capabilities provide a full-range of flight services to meet ongoing and emerging needs in the science, aerospace, defense, and commercial industries.

In addition, Wallops is a multi-user/multi-tenant facility in a geographic location ideal for supporting satellite tracking and commanding, military operations and training, scientific investigations, technology development and testing, as well as commercial aerospace. The facility's diverse mission sets and on-site partners, including the U.S. Navy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, Virginia Space and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, is a model for leveraging multi-organizational capabilities and optimizing facility support services.



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Offline SciNews

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #8 on: 03/31/2018 04:38 pm »
A NASA Terrier-Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket launched the Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment (ASPIRE) from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility inVirginia, on 31 March 2018, at 16:19 UTC (12:19 EDT).

ASPIRE was designed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, to test a parachute for possible future missions to Mars.

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #9 on: 06/21/2018 09:58 am »
A NASA Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket launched experiments built by students through the RockOn!, RockSat-C and Cubes in Space programs, on 21 June 2018, from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #10 on: 08/14/2018 10:40 am »
A NASA Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket launched experiments developed by university students in the RockSat-X program, on 14 August 2018, at 10:13 UTC (06:13 EDT)

Offline Lewis007

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #11 on: 08/15/2018 06:13 am »
« Last Edit: 08/15/2018 06:14 am by Lewis007 »

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #12 on: 09/07/2018 01:54 pm »
A Terrier-Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket launched ASPIRE 3 from the Wallops Flight Facility, on 7 September 2018, at 13:30 UTC (09:30 EDT).

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #13 on: 12/21/2018 03:55 am »
NASA's Wallops Flight Facility Year in Review

NASAWallops
Published on Dec 20, 2018

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility had a busy year! We're looking back on 2018 by highlighting aircraft, balloon, and rocket missions from all over the world – and these are just some of the places we've been this year!



Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline catdlr

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #14 on: 01/09/2022 04:36 am »
DXL Sounding Rocket Launch

Quote
A two-stage Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket is scheduled for launch Jan. 8, 2022, carrying the Diffuse X-rays from the Local galaxy, or DXL, an experiment to study the source of where soft X-rays that impact Earth’s atmosphere come from within our galaxy.

The launch window opens 11 p.m.-3a.m. EST. Backup launch days run through Jan. 17 with the same launch window.  The live stream will begin 20 minutes before the planned launch time.


« Last Edit: 01/09/2022 04:37 am by catdlr »
Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline dennyxx80

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #15 on: 01/10/2022 10:27 am »
nice...

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #16 on: 01/11/2022 03:38 am »
DXL launched.
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline russianhalo117

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Re: NASA's Wallops Flight Facility
« Reply #17 on: 03/21/2022 09:32 pm »
BOLT II:


Offline Lewis007

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