Not once, but twice in 1962, NASA released tens of thousands of gallons of water into the ionosphere, for science. Yes, we are talking about the aptly-named "Project Highwater" today on Vintage Space.
Project Highwater is perhaps one of the least known programs in the early Apollo era because it didn't really do all that much. It really was exactly what name is, water that went high above the earth.
So what was the point of releasing water into the ionosphere?
Well, NASA has some questions in its early days about what might happen to the fuel inside the upper stages of a rocket if it exploded - either because of some default or defect or because it was destroyed by a range safety officer as it was flying into orbit.
So what would happen to all the liquid fuel once it was released into the upper atmosphere?
Well, NASA couldn't just replicate the upper atmosphere in the lab, so decided, well, we have a big enough rocket, lets release water and see what happens and then use that as the data points.
Both launched on Saturn-1 rockets, which were early versions of the Saturn family that eventually begat to Saturn-V. These rockets used an S-1 stage as the core and S-IV stage as the second stage and an S-V as the third stage.
On both of these missions, the second and third stages were filled with water as ballast. The S-1 was really designed to test the vehicle's structural integrity in its first stage. So the upper stages didn't really have to do anything, hence water is ballast.
SA-2, the first Highwater launch was on April 25th of 1962. Everything went great with the launch and after the first stage was spent, detonations on the dummy second and third stages exploded to destroy the upper stages releasing 109,000 liters or 30,000 gallons, of ballast water into the upper atmosphere just over 93 miles above the planet.
This mission was repeated with SA-3 on November 16th of 1962. On this flight, the same amount of water was launched as ballast and released at 104 miles above the planet. Within five seconds of the water's release, observers saw it turn into a massive cloud stretching about five miles across. The test also came with some disturbance to radio frequency. There was some loss of telemetry once the cloud took shape because the results from project Highwater were firm and it was successful.
This was deemed the first time the Saturn rockets were actually used for straight-up science but some people at NASA felt differently. Many believed that project Highwater was just a 'thing to do' because they needed a thing to do with the Saturn-1 rocket. The rockets were already launching with water as ballast, so why not release that water and see what happens?
Still, I kind of love the typical 1969's envision of saying, "well we're launching this water, let's just release it and see what happens'. I kind of like about vintage technology, is that when you don't have computers to model it, you just gotta do it and see what happens.
What are your thoughts about project Highwater?
Have you ever heard of it?
