The Scout family of rockets were American launch vehicles designed to place small satellites into orbit around the Earth.

The Scout multistage rocket was the first orbital launch vehicle to be entirely composed of solid fuel stages.

The original Scout (a backronym for Solid Controlled Orbital Utility Test system) was designed in 1957 at the NACA, at Langley center.

To enhance reliability the development team opted to use "off the shelf" hardware, originally produced for military programs.

The payload was the Miniature Sensor Technology Integration Series 2 (MSTI-2) military spacecraft with a mass of 163 kilograms (359 lb).

The U.S. Air Force also participated in the program, but different requirements led to some divergence in the development of NASA and USAF Scouts.

On 1962-08-23 a Scout X-2 was used for the first successful launch of a DMSP satellite, lifting off from Point Arguello near Vandenberg Air Force Base.

On that flight, the XRM-89 carried a variety of experiments to measure rocket performance and high-altitude fields and particle radiation.

The second Blue Scout II also carried a micrometeorite sampling experiment, but the recovery of the reentry capsule failed.

The flight was planned to make radiation and magnetic field measurements at distances of up to 26 700 km (16 600 miles) from earth, and while the rocket did indeed achieve this altitude, the telemetry system failed so that no data was received.

The third flight was to measure particle densities in the Van Allen belts and reached a distance of 225 000 km (140 000 miles), but again a telemetry failure prevented the reception of scientific data.

The fourth and final XRM-91 mission in December 1961 also carried particle detectors, and was the only completely successful flight of the initial Blue Scout Junior program.

The Italian space research program began in 1959 with the creation of the CRA (Centro Ricerche Aerospaziali) at the University of Rome.

Three years later, on 7 September 1962, the university signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA to collaborate on a space research program named San Marco (St. Mark).

The San Marco project was focused on the launching of scientific satellites by Scout rockets from a mobile rigid platform located close to the equator.

This station, composed of 3 oil platforms and two logistical support boats, was installed off the Kenya coast, close to the town of Malindi.