German V-2 rockets captured by the United States Army at the end of World War II were used as sounding rockets to carry scientific instruments into the Earth's upper atmosphere, and into sub-orbital space, at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) for a program of atmospheric and solar investigation through the late 1940s.

[1]: 112–116 The first of 300 railroad cars of V-2 rocket components began to arrive at Las Cruces, New Mexico in July 1945 for transfer to WSMR.

As the possibilities of the program were realized, GE personnel built new control components to replace deteriorated parts and used replacement parts with salvaged materials to make more than 75 V-2 sounding rockets available for atmospheric and solar investigation at WSMR.

Instrumentation was sometimes added to the control compartment, in the rear motor section, between the fuel tanks, or on the fins or skin of the rocket.

In an effort to preserve instruments, dynamite was strategically placed within the airframe to be detonated at an elevation of 50 kilometres (31 mi) during downward flight at end of the high-altitude scientific observation interval.

These explosives weakened the rocket structure so it would be torn apart by aerodynamic forces as it re-entered the denser lower atmosphere.

Voltage presented to the input terminals of a given channel determined spacing between two adjacent pulses, not entirely unlike the technique of pulse-position modulation.

Ground receiving stations translated pulse spacings back into voltages which were applied to a bank of string galvanometers to make an approximately continuous record of each channel on a moving roll of film.

[1]: 116&138 A 1946[5] Naval Research Laboratory launch took the first photographs of the Sun in the ultraviolet spectrum up to an altitude of 88 km (55 mi).

Though the flight itself was photographed by observers as far away (285 mi (459 km)) as Tucson, Arizona, the charges and expected meteors were not, and it is likely they did not fire.

[8] The first animals sent into space were fruit flies aboard a U.S.-launched V-2 rocket on 20 February 1947 from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.