NASA fired seven-stage Trailblazer rockets from Wallops Station. The first three stages took an artificial meteorite to 280 km altitude. The next four stages drove the payload back into the atmosphere in a high-speed reentry experiment.

• First Trailblazer rocket.

  NASA fired first seven-stage Trailblazer rocket from Wallops Station, first three stages firing meteorite to 175-mile altitude and next four stages back through the atmosphere in a high-speed reentry experiment.

• Trailblazer launch.

  NASA fired a four-stage solid-fuel Trailblazer rocket from Wallops Station, Virginia, in the first of a series of reentry tests. Two stages boosted the rocket to 167 miles; then the other two drove the nose cone down through the atmosphere at 14,000 miles per hour.

• 17 - Emme, Eugene M, Aeronautics and Astronautics: An American Chronology of Science and Technology in the Exploration of Space 1915-1960, NASA, 1961. HTML when accessed: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/timeline.html