Britain's First Space Rocket - The story of the Skylark

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 in 2005. It is based on research for Robin Brand's book of a similar name (the first ever written on the full story of the Skylark), which was published in December 2014. The book includes many photographs from Australian archives never before published. Some of these, and rare video footage of Skylark launches, will be shown during the talk.

Although an electronic engineer by profession, Robin Brand (BSc CEng…