Microgravity, atmosphere sounding, astronomy, technology validation - an overview of suborbital rockets' missions and payloads

Suborbital rockets in safety & defense applications

“…New Shepard rocket demonstrated ability to recover the whole vehicle. Suborbital rockets are usually launched from spaceports that include launch rails, integration halls, ground stations, mission control rooms, meteorological equipment, and more (Noga & Puri, 2020). Some entities demonstrated ability to launch the rocket with a mobile ground infrastructure -example being Ł-IoA launching AMBER rocket from military test grounds in Poland.…”

“…Biology and astrobiology is an important topic of suborbital research to date. Atmosphere sounding has started in 1947 and to this day it provides data regarding structure and processes of the Earth's atmosphere (Noga & Puri, 2020). Suborbital rockets are the only vehicles that can gather the in-situ atmosphere data in a feasible manner at ranges from approximately 40 kilometers (upper limit of stratospheric balloons) to 200 kilometers (lower limit of satellites).…”

“…In China, a number of commercial cubesats were launched onboard a suborbital rocket as part of test campaign. Space technologies related to liquid management in microgravity are another notable example (Noga & Puri, 2020).…”

“…Civil applications of suborbital rockets were discussed by (Christie et al, 2016) with an emphasis on the activities in the United States. More general overview of suborbital rockets and their payloads was given by (Noga & Puri, 2020).…”