Black Brant was the result of research at
Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment (CARDE) during the 1950s into the nature of the upper part of the
atmosphere as part of ongoing research into
anti-ballistic missile systems and very-long-range communication. In 1957, CARDE contracted Bristol to produce a simple
rocket fuselage, called the
Propulsion Test Vehicle, for studies into high-power
solid fuels. The resulting design, by
Albert Fia, was quite heavy, as it was designed to be able to accommodate a wide variety of engine burning times, propellant loadings and launch angles in keeping with its role as a test vehicle for ABM systems development. The first test flight took place only two years later from the
Churchill Rocket Research Range in September 1959. CARDE's attention later turned to long-distance communications and they found the
Propulsion Test Vehicle system useful as a
sounding rocket. To better suit this role, Bristol modified the design to be lighter and more tailored to the sounding rocket role. This became the Black Brant. CARDE launched a number of Black Brant rockets over the next few years, both the original
Black Brant I design which could place a payload to altitude, as well as the larger '
which first flew in October 1960, and the smaller but higher-altitude '. The rocket's design emphasized reliability over payload and range. In July 1963 the much larger '
first flew, which was also used as a booster stage for the ' to make the ''''. The IV first flew in 1964, but failed, as did the next test launch. Aside from these two launches, which were corrected for, the has never had another failure, making it one of the most reliable rockets in history. Since then it has undergone continual evolution, and the current versions are the XI and XII, consisting of used as an upper stage, with
Talos and
Terrier boosters as lower stages. They have reached altitudes of more than , which is above the
ionosphere and well above the orbits of the
Space Shuttle and the
International Space Station. The propellant designs developed by CARDE in the program were the highest performing solid fuels of their day. Bristol then placed this propellant in a new rocket to form the
CRV7, the first rocket capable of penetrating standard
Warsaw Pact aircraft hangars. The CRV7 has since gone on to become the de facto standard rocket for most Western-aligned militaries. In 1976, Australia and Canada through the
National Research Council Canada (NRCC) agreed to launch a rocket from
Woomera Test Range. The rocket was launched there on 9 November for experiments in the ionosphere. Later, NASA would launch a number of . At present, due to its 98% success rate, it remains one of the most popular sounding rockets ever built. The rockets have been used repeatedly by the
Canadian Space Agency and NASA. There is a 1:1 scale model of the rocket in front of the head office of the Canadian Space Agency in Saint-Hubert, east of
Montréal. A full-scale is on display in the Science Gallery of The
Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In 1995, a Black Brant XII four-stage sounding rocket from the
Andøya Rocket Range off the northwestern coast of Norway caused the
Norwegian rocket incident, also known as the Black Brant scare. The trajectory resembled that of a U.S. Navy submarine-launched
Trident missile. Russian nuclear forces were put on high alert as a result, fearing a high-altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, and Russia's "nuclear briefcase", the
Cheget, was brought to Russian president
Boris Yeltsin, who then had to decide whether to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States. It is the first and thus far only known incident where any nuclear-weapons state had its nuclear briefcase activated and prepared for launching an attack. On September 19, 2009, a Black Brant XII that was launched to study clouds caused numerous calls from the northeastern U.S. reporting "strange lights in the sky". NASA reported that the light came from an artificial
noctilucent cloud formed by the exhaust particles of the rocket's fourth stage at an altitude of about . ==Versions==