Space Probe

The biggest U.S.-built rocket being flown today, the 7 1/2-ton Viking Nine, was fired last week at White Sands Proving Ground. Climbing 135 miles above the earth, it did not establish a new altitude record; the Viking Seven, fired in August 1951, went just as high. But the latest Viking carried the heaviest payload: 750 Ibs. of instruments, a big improvement on the 450 Ibs. carried by the Viking Seven. According to Dr. Milton Rosen, head of the Navy's Viking project, the rocket performed beautifully, going just where it was expected to go.

Among the instruments it carried to study the threshold of space were: 1) photon counters to detect X rays from the sun; 2) a spectrograph to record the sun's ultraviolet rays; 3) special photographic emulsions to trap cosmic rays, which are to be found at full power only above the atmosphere.

The photon counters radioed their findings back to White Sands. The emulsions and most of the films exposed by the other instruments were recovered undamaged from the wreck of the rocket's nose section. Now they are being studied by specialists who will make reports in a few months on the latest news dragged down so laboriously from space.

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