An Ariel view of UK spacecraft

It was 5 May 1967, just before 12pm, when a Scout rocket was launched from NASA’s Western Test Range in California, witnessed by a group of British scientists and engineers witnessed. The successful launch assured the precious cargo – and the engineers – a place in UK engineering history. For sitting atop the four stage Scout was Ariel III – the first entirely UK built satellite and third in an Anglo-American cooperative space research programme to extend atmospheric and ionospheric investigations. The small observatory carried five British experiments and a tape recorder to obtain data. Sputnik 1, the first man made satellite, had been launched almost 10 years earlier, on 4 October 1957. Viewed more as a show of political might than of scientific worth, the mission nevertheless kickstarted space exploration and the UK, thanks to its burgeoning aerospace and defence sectors, had the skill and expertise to participate.