In practical terms, how was observational space science done in those pioneering days?
Those were the days of real rocket science. Experiments were launched on sounding rockets, which could reach what we now call the space environment, but they could not put instruments into orbit. In X-ray astronomy you have to get above the Earths atmosphere because it is opaque to X-rays. My early research involved launches in the Australian outback at Woomera and also Sardinia, Italy. These rocket flights lasted 15 minutes, and we got about 5 or 10 minutes exposure above the atmosphere. It was very exciting and quite challenging because of demanding deadlines and lots of difficulties, but I was lucky: my rockets worked! I gained a deep respect for what a launch really means in terms of all the work from many people to make a rocket fly. What big surprises came from the sounding rocket launches? I was looking at the X-ray background, which is a ubiquitous source of X-rays from all parts of the sky. I was able to show that this background is smooth, rather than lumpy as some models the
