QnAs with Scott E. Heatwole and Robert F. Pfaff
成果类型：
Editorial Material
署名作者：
Hardcastle, Matthew
刊物名称：
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ISSN/ISSBN：
0027-14143
DOI：
10.1073/pnas.2416966121
发表日期：
2024-10-01
关键词：
摘要：
The physicist Robert H. Goddard is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and space flight. Among his early work was an article published in 1920 in PNAS titled, The possibilities of the rocket in weather forecasting ( 1 ). In this now-classic article, Goddard outlined the potential use of rockets to collect high-altitude data on atmospheric conditions to improve weather forecasting. Goddard estimated that rockets carrying recording instruments could reach a height of 10 kilometers, remain at altitude for 1 to 5 minutes, and deploy a parachute to safely return to the ground. Rockets carrying scientific instruments, of the kind Goddard imagined, are now called sounding rockets. While radar and satellites have largely replaced the use of rockets for weather forecasting, sounding rockets have been used extensively over the past century to study Earth's upper atmosphere, as well as for applications in solar physics, plasma physics, and astronomy. Scott E. Heatwole of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia offers his views on the 1920 PNAS Classic. PNAS spoke with Heatwole as well as Robert F. Pfaff, a project scientist for NASA's Sounding Rocket Program, about the article's legacy.