Tracking Telescopes at White Sands Missile Range

During the formative decades of rocket and missile development at WSMR, researchers and engineers used tracking telescopes alongside radar and other electronic instruments to determine where missiles went and what they were doing in flight. These optical instruments recorded flight paths and physical behaviors such as rocket flame and vertical and horizontal position at high magnification, providing data vital to design improvements. After World War II, Dr. James B. Edson, an astronomer and physicist at the Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, pioneered this work with his brother-in-law and fellow astronomer Clyde Tombaugh by applying astronomical tools and planetary observation methods to missile flight research. While studying V-2 rocket fuel combustion for his doctoral dissertation, Edson conceived the tracking telescope and built the first model, the Type 1 or T-1, nicknamed "Little Bright Eyes," using a pair of 4.5-inch refracting telescopes and a high-speed film camera mounted on a surplus motorized U.S. Army 45-mm gun mount. He brought it to WSMR, where a team filmed a V-2 launch from Fox Site in late July 1946. Although the first images were unimpressive, Tombaugh improved the design and methods, and on December 5, 1946, "Bright Eyes" produced detailed high-altitude V-2 imagery that impressed military leaders and secured the tracking telescope's future. The first five tracking telescopes, including T-4, were developed in a short period and expanded the use of optical data. T-1 and T-3 were placed six miles east and thirteen miles west of Army Launch Area 1, now LC-33, to accommodate morning and afternoon firings; T-2, equipped with a spectrograph to analyze fuel output, stood closest to the launch site; T-4 was placed forty miles north and nine thousand feet up in the Sacramento Mountains for exceptionally clear long-distance data; and T-5 stood ten miles from the launch area near Highway 70 on a promontory. In a typical test, a tracker trained the motorized mount on the missile and filmed it at high magnification for later interpretation and analysis, capturing details otherwise invisible from the ground. The Intercept Ground Optical Recorder, or IGOR, the successor to T-5 and located behind T-4, also recorded how missiles struck their targets or how far they missed. Tracking telescopes became vital tools at WSMR and were quickly adopted by the NASA space program, producing some of the most dramatic and valuable footage in American military and aviation history.

White Sands, New Mexico · United States