Black Arrow

BLACK ARROW was an amazingly cheap British rocket developed in the 1960s including design work dating from 1955.

The British government cancelled the project before it successfully launched its one and only British satellite Prospero into LEO from Woomerang on the 28 October 1971.

Making the United Kingdom the only country to have successfully developed and then abandoned a satellite and rocket launch capability. Australia also lunched its own Satellite on a US Redstone rocket from Woomerang in 1967.

The design was finally taken up by the French and used it for the first stage of the Ariane 1 rocket.

Black Arrow : The Lipstick Rocket - A Very British Space Program