Petrel (rocket)

The Chick motors were fitted into a booster carriage that also carried the two parachutes that brought it back to earth for re-use.

The Petrel 1 was 3.34 m long, had a diameter of 19 cm and reached a maximum altitude of 140 kilometres.

[2] Since 1968, some 234 Petrels were launched from sites in South Uist, Andøya, Kiruna, Thumba, Sonmiani and Greenland.

[6] The Petrel was also fired from ESRANGE at Kiruna in Sweden in 1971, and from the range on Andøya, an island off the Norwegian coast in 1973.

The wife of one of the firing team members reported that strange lights were being seen in the night sky from Scotland.