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==Introduction==

In the 1950s, the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment (CARDE) combined new propellants with nosecones and instrumentation from Bristol Aero Industries (later Bristol Aerojet, Bristol Aerospace, and now Magellan Aerospace) to develop the Propulsion Test Vehicle (PVT-1) that would later evolve into a sounding rocket known as the Black Brant 1 (BB1). On September 5, 1959, Canada became the third nation to reach space with a successful launch of the BB1 from the Churchill Research Range ('''CRR''') in Northern Manitoba. Over the last 60 years, the Black Brant rocket has evolved and completed 1,000 launches from around the world with over 98% success rate — an extraordinary engineering achievement. [[File:BlackBrant Fig 1 Launch of the first Black Brant 12 from Wallops Island Virginia in 1988.jpg|thumb|right|Launch of the first Black Brant 12 from Wallops Island Virginia in 1988]]

Insert map of Churchill Research Range<br>


Sounding rockets are the unsung heroes of space research because they provide a low-cost, rapid, and reliable platform to conduct experiments in space. These rockets can reach a wide range of altitudes from 150–1500 km above the surface, experience up to 20 minutes of microgravity, and carry payloads ranging from 70 to 850 kilograms. At its simplest form, the rockets are composed of a payload and a solid-fueled rocket motor (or motors in multi-stage rockets). After motor burnout, the payload separates from the rocket to run its experiment before re-entering the atmosphere and deploying a parachute so that it can be retrieved, refurbished, and used again in future missions.
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==Evolution of Black Brant Rockets==
The Black Brant rockets were designed to carry payloads to study radio propagations through the ionosphere and the aurora borealis. The BB1 and its heavier successor, BB2, reached altitudes of 150 km carrying 68-kg payloads. 

===Black Brant 3, 4 and 5===
Following their launches, in 1960 the Government of Canada awarded Bristol a contract to design three new sounding rockets with varying capabilities (BB3, BB4, and BB5). The Cold War limited technology transfers across the border and challenged the Bristol engineering team to design the rockets from scratch including all the instrumentation and test equipment to monitor the performance of the rocket, its systems, and components. 

The BB3 was the smallest of the rockets with a 25-cm diameter motor and was capable of lifting 18-kg payloads to 180 km. The two-stage BB4 rocket was significantly more powerful and could carry 100-kg payloads up to 1,000 km above the surface. Both of these rockets were collaborative developments between CARDE and Bristol, with CARDE focused on the propellant and Bristol focused on the metals, instrumentation and flight dynamics. These two rockets were flown 80 and 61 times, respectively, before they were retired from service in 1985. At their peak, the rockets supported the American Apollo program, amongst other scientific ventures.

[[File:BlackBrant Fig 2 Bristol-built Black Brant 9 with a Canadian Space Agency microgravity payload launches from New Mexico.jpg|thumb|right|Bristol-built Black Brant 9 with a Canadian Space Agency microgravity payload launches from New Mexico]]

The BB5 was the first motor designed, manufactured, filled, and test fired solely by Bristol’s engineering team in Manitoba. It was designed to lift 150-kg payloads to 325 km by introducing a new and more powerful propellant, a new lightweight case and nozzle, and improved insulation systems. This new Canadian technology underwent 13 static firings to become qualified for flight.  The first flight was launched from Churchill in June 1965 and exceeded performance requirements by providing a “quiet ride” with benevolent flight characteristics. Over the next 50 years, the BB5 and its variants became the workhorse of the Canadian space program and the American sounding rocket programs.  The rockets supported many scientific experiments including a notable coordination with astronauts on the Skylab space station to calibrate solar equipment and later test components designed for the Space Shuttle program.  Many Canadian scientists also participated in flights with their instruments integrated as a payload for the flight by Bristol’s engineering team.  

[[File:BlackBrant Fig 3 Scale of Black Brant Rockets ver1.jpg|Scale of Black Brant Rockets, Photo Credit Magellan Aerospace]]

===Black Brant 8, 9 and 10===
In 1973, NASA, the National Research Council, and Bristol entered in a collaboration to increase the performance of the BB5 to accommodate larger and heavier payloads. Leveraging existing technologies, the program combined surplus NIKE boosters from the US Army with a BB5 to create the new BB8. The NIKE motors were available in large quantities after they were superseded by later models, thus becoming a cost-effective launch vehicle stack. This was the first instance of using military rockets to make Black Brant stacks and resulted in 40% higher altitudes than a BB5 alone.  Bristol developed all of the interface and separation hardware as well as calculating the flight performance and associated loads that the vehicle would have to survive.  The BB8 flew 115 times before its retirement.  

Building on the success of recycling surplus military motors, the BB9 was developed using a US Navy TERRIER rocket engine. Despite a failure in March 1982 during the first flight, subsequent launches demonstrated an increase of 20% in performance over the BB8, lifting 175-kg payloads up to 600 km above the surface. The rocket became so popular that since the early 1990s, and continuing past 2019, more than two thirds of NASA’s sounding-rocket program schedule consisted of Black Brant-based missions. 

In the late 1970s, NASA and the Southwest Research Institute identified a need to fly over the Earth’s dayside polar cusp, which led to the development of the BB10. This was Bristol’s first three-stage system consisting of a Terrier, a BB5, and a new Bristol-designed Nihka rocket motor. The third stage was ignited after reaching exo-atmospheric conditions. Thus, instead of using fins for stabilization, the vehicle was made to be “gyroscopically stable” by the spin rates from the fins on the second stage. This vehicle lifted 75-kg payloads up to 1,500 km and measured 16.8 m long, with over 1,800 kg of propellant. The vehicle has been launched successfully more than 30 times.

===Black Brant 11 and 12===
With the scientists always wanting more, the BB12 and BB11 were born in the late 1980s.  The four-stage BB12, comprising Talos, Taurus, Black Brant and Nihka motors, was used to launch light payloads to very high altitudes reaching 1,460 km with a 112-kg payload.  The three-stage BB11 (Talos, Taurus, Brant) was used to lift very heavy payloads to more intermediate altitude, with its maiden flight lifting 533 kg to 368 km.  For these vehicles, the Talos and Taurus were time-expired military motors,  while the Brant and Nihka motors were purpose-built motors from Bristol.

==Black Brant Mk Program==
In 1996, Bristol began the BB Mk program to design upgrades to the standard BB motors that incorporated new materials and novel manufacturing processes while also improving the overall performance of the motors. The BB Mk1 was successfully tested from the CRR  on April 28, 1998. Since then, this vehicle has been successfully launched more than 105 times. Further improvements were introduced for the Black Brant motors over the years. The most recent development was the BB Mk4 in which Bristol made changes to the propellant formulation, propellant grain-shape, and the nozzle configuration to further reduce pressure oscillations inside the rocket motor. The BB Mk4 was flight-qualified on October 7, 2015 and has successfully flown on 18 NASA missions. 

Throughout the history of motor development, concurrent work was ongoing at Bristol to provide Canadian science instruments with a turnkey ride into space on a Black Brant.  These payload-development projects included development of structures, deployable fairings, doors, recovery systems, telemetry encoders, transmitters, timers, booms, separation systems, pyrotechnics, de-spin systems, power supplies, recovery systems, etc., all of which could survive the harsh environment of the rocket ride and space, and in some cases, re-entry. 
  
In 2019, the Black Brant program continues to sell rockets to NASA, who fly approximately 15 per year.  New missions are on the horizon, and the rocket motors are continually  being upgraded to keep up with new materials, incorporate novel manufacturing processes, and improve the overall performance of the motors.

==Concluding Remarks==
Over the course of 60 years, the Black Brant has achieved an unprecedented 98.5% reliability – much higher than the 80% requirement from the NASA Sounding Program offices. For these achievements, Magellan became the first Canadian company to receive the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contractor Excellence Award in 1998. The Black Brant sounding rockets are still being manufactured at Magellan’s Rockwood Propellant Plant north of Winnipeg with new programs and developments underway to support the needs of the scientific community.

===Aside: Rocket Women===
[[File:BlackBrant Fig 4 Female led team of Magellan engineers supporting the BB Mk4 flight qualification campaign.jpg|thumb|Female led team of Magellan engineers supporting the BB Mk4 flight qualification campaign, Photo Credit Magellan Aerospace]]
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''The BB Mk4 flight qualification campaign was not only an exciting milestone in the long history of the Black Brant program, but also the first time in the history of the NASA Sounding Rockets Program Office that the team was led by an incredibly talented team of women (the principal investigator for the payload, the motor design lead, and several key members of the science team). To commemorate this unique event the motor assembly technicians added a pink stripe to the center of the motor case.''

==References==
#Diane Kotelko, Nike Juskiw, Ken Kohut, Corey Mack, Dave Beattie, Don McNabb, and Dave McCabe, “Overview of Magellan Aerospace Sub-Orbital Rocket Capabilities” in Proceedings of the CASI Astronautics Conference 2010, ASTRO 2010, (Toronto, ON, Canada; May 4-6, 2010), 2010.
#Kimberly Norrie, “Black Brant Sounding Rocket – Over 50 Years of Flight” in Proceedings of the Canadian Space Summit 2016, CSS 2016 (Winnipeg, MB, Canada; November 13-15, 2016), 2016.

==Compiled by==
The authors prepared this article in anticipation of the 100th Anniversary of Engineers Geoscientist Manitoba for original publication in 2020.
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# Diane Kotelko, P. Eng. Magellan Aerospace, Winnipeg
# Kimberly Norrie, P. Eng. Magellan Aerospace, Winnipeg
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Editing
# James A. Burns, PhD.
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Posted by Glen N. Cook, P.Eng.(SM), FEC
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