Seven Mystery Skylarks ---------------------- Occasionally I throw out a historical mystery in the hope that some reader will have the answer. Here is today's: the Skylark sounding rocket was the mainstay of the British suborbital space science program from 1957 to 1978, and then served as the vehicle for various European microgravity programs, especially TEXUS, until its retirement in 2005. The UK Science Research Council's Skylark science flight program was cancelled in 1977-78. But, from 1973 to 1978 there were seven launches from Woomera in the SL1290 series that appear only in a comprehensive listing of Skylarks from the manufacturer and not in any of the compendia describing the science program. What were they, and which agency launched them? Here are the details I have: 1973 Jul 17 Skylark 3 AC SL1291 1974 Jul 22 Skylark 3 AC SL1292 1975 Feb 28 Skylark 3 AC SL1293 1975 Jul 3 Skylark 6 AC SL1295 1977 Jun 8 Skylark 3 AC SL1298 1978 Nov 15 Skylark 3 AC SL1296 1978 Dec 13 Skylark 3 AC SL1297 Anyone out there have any data on these launches? Geoff Richards just sent me the speculation that they might be related to development of components for the Chevaline reentry vehicle on the UK's Polaris missiles, which seems plausible. It's also possible they were some kind of ozone monitoring program by the Meteorological Office, which wouldn't have appeared in the Science Research Council documents.