Wallops Island, Virginia, the facilities we will be launching from.

The Sounding Rocket Page, which also has information about the Nike-Orion, the rocket we will be launching on.

The Nike-Orion. SPECTRE's launching on this rocket.

NASA WFF Mission Page. It also has videos of rockets taking off.

SPECTRE will be launched on August 20th, from Wallops Flight Facilities, a sounding rocket range in Virginia. It will be launched on top of a Nike-Orion 2 stage solid fueled rocket. The Nike Orion is capable of an altitude of 190 to 90 km. SPECTRE will deploy near the apogee, and close it's gate valve after appoximately 450 seconds, or about 7.5 minutes.

Currently, the main SPECTRE integration team, composed of Jay Hancock and Valerie Taylor are at this moment working on the final phases of SPECTRE's subsystems. About 2-3 weeks before the launch date, the SPECTRE team is required to stay down at the base with the payload to ensure it's functionality, and that it will carry out it's mission on the launch date.

The SPECTRE Flight Table:

At -600 seconds, the systems are checked.

At -10 seconds, the rocket ready for launch.

At 0 seconds, the rocket is launched.

At 3.5 seconds, at at a height of 1 km, the first stage, Nike, burns out

At 9 seconds, the 2nd stage, Orion is ignited.

At 41.6 seconds, the 2nd stage, Orion, is in burnout.

At 44 seconds, the nose cone is blown off.

At 45 seconds, the gatevalve opens, revealing the instruments to the atmosphere.

At 60 seconds, data sampling begins.

At 156 seconds, the rocket reaches apogee, depending on the weight of the payload, can be anywhere between 190km to 90 km. SPECTRE ways approx. 250 pounds, and should reach a height of 100 km.

At 180 seconds, the payload separates.

At 400 seconds, the gatevalve closes, sealing the payload from any further environmental extremes.

At 449.1 seconds, the parachute is deployed.

At 1044.1 seconds, the payload splashes down of the coast of Virginia in the Atlantic ocean... hopefully outside the range of any tourist boaters.

After recovery begins data downloading and analysis.