The spectacle of a mammoth rocket ‘breaking the surly bonds of Earth’ takes our breath away. Equally amazing are the secrets revealed to us by science missions these rockets have launched \u2013 and NASA puts careful thought into what kind of mission will best achieve that science. Sometimes a large, multi-instrumented mission on a giant rocket is the best way to go. But other missions are better suited to a smaller, less expensive rocket as the key to getting a quick answer to a tightly focused science question. Like a sounding rocket. A sounding rocket is an instrument-carrying rocket designed for research, such as taking measurements and performing scientific experiments during a sub-orbital flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The spectacle of a mammoth rocket ‘breaking the surly bonds of Earth’ takes our breath away. Equally amazing are the secrets revealed to us by science missions these rockets have launched – and NASA puts careful thought into what kind of mission will best achieve that science. Sometimes a large, multi-instrumented mission on a giant rocket is the best way to go. But other missions are better suited to a smaller, less expensive rocket as the key to getting a quick answer to a tightly focused science question. Like a sounding rocket. A sounding rocket is an instrument-carrying rocket designed for research, such as taking measurements and performing scientific experiments during a sub-orbital flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=316500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316501,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316500\/revisions\/316501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}