Aerobee

[ air-uh-bee ]

noun

1. a U.S. two-stage, liquid-propellant sounding rocket developed in the 1940s that carried scientific instruments and occasionally biological specimens into the upper stratosphere.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Aerobee¹

Aero ( jet Engineering Corporation ) developer of the rocket + (Bumble)bee cover name for the Navy project to produce such rockets

Example Sentences

“The first two sources of X radiation outside our galaxy have been discovered in data obtained by rocket-borne X-ray detectors. The new sources have been identified at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as coinciding with two of the most powerful radio-emitting galaxies, Cygnus A and M 87. Because the earth’s atmosphere is essentially opaque to X rays from space, instruments are placed above most of the atmosphere by means of Aerobee rockets fired from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico.”

From Scientific American

Researchers there used an Aerobee sounding rocket to get to altitude and then switched on scramjet engines over Woomera Test Range in the Australian Outback.

From Forbes

Yorick and 11 mice were recovered after an Aerobee missile flight of 236,000 feet at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, in September 1951.

From Scientific American

Three charges were fired simultaneously from an Aerobee rocket at the Holloman Air Force Base, N. Mex. on Oct.

From Time Magazine Archive

But the monkeys were shot up to 190,080 ft. in an Aerobee rocket showed no signs of neurosis.

From Time Magazine Archive