The year 1953 saw the rockoon join the stable of sounding rockets capable of reaching beyond the 100 kilometres (62 mi) boundary of space (as defined by the World Air Sports Federation).

[1] Employed by both the University of Iowa and the Naval Research Laboratory, 22 total were launched from the decks of the USS Staten Island and the USCGC Eastwind this year.

Lieutenant Joseph Pitts, a member of the launch team, shot a rifle round into the tank, equalizing the pressure and saving the rocket.

The launch team was able to salvage the instrument package of cameras, including X-ray detectors, cosmic ray emulsions, and a radio-frequency mass-spectrometer, valued at tens of thousands of dollars, although there was concern that the rocket was irreparable.

In spring 1953, Colonel Bernard Schriever, an assistant in development planning at The Pentagon and a proponent of long-ranged ballistic missiles, pushed to obtain accurate characteristics of a nuclear payload.

By October, committee member John von Neumann had completed his report on weights and figures indicating that smaller, more powerful warheads within Atlas' launch capability would soon be available.

Pending test verification of von Neumann's theoretical results, the Air Force began revising the Atlas design for the projected nuclear payload.

To relieve this tension, on 4 October 1953, Yangel was demoted to NII-88 Chief Engineer and assigned responsibility for production of missiles at State Union Plant No.

[7]: 113–114 At the end of 1953, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, it was determined that a transportable thermonuclear device be developed (as opposed to the one detonated in August, which was stationary).

This international effort would undertake simultaneous observations of geophysical phenomena over the entire surface of the Earth including such farflung regions as the Arctic and Antarctica.