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| Hampshire's Space Rocket - the story of the Skylark |
| Robin Brand |
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15:00, Friday 2 May 2025 | | Physics Seminar Room (Building 46/5081) |
These days, few have heard of the Skylark sounding rocket. Yet, in November 1957, it was the first British rocket to reach space, and became the basis of Britain's earliest space programme. Hundreds were fired, launching into space thousands of scientific instruments. Many of these carried out pioneering astronomical observations in the X-ray and UV spectrum – regions previously unavailable to British scientists.
This talk tells the story of that space rocket, from its origins in the 1950s until its last launch exactly 20 years ago. Some rare photographs from Australian archives, and rare video footage of Skylark launches, will be shown during the presentation.
An electronic engineer by profession, Robin Brand has always been interested in space matters , having graduated from the 'Eagle' comic and 'Dan Dare' (in colour) via 'The Sky at Night' (in black and white) to membership of the British Interplanetary Society (in 3D!). His book Britain's First Space Rocket: the story of the Skylark will be for sale after his talk.
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