Scout & San Marco

Scout Program, San Marco Program & Broglio Space Center

The Scout Program was initiated at the NACA Langley Research Center in 1957 and contracted to Vought. It produced four stage solid rocket motor launch vehicles, made with pre-existing stages. The military version was called Blue Scout and it flew from 1960 to 1994.

The first stage was an UTC Algol with Aerojet motor taken from the Jupiter Senior and Navy Polaris missiles. The second stage was a Thiokol Castor flown on the MGM-29 Sergeant. The Hercules Antares third stage flew an ABL X-254 motor and the fourth UTC Altair stage an ABL X-248, both borrowed from Project Vanguard. All stages were incrementally upgraded over time, with the Scout E-1 flying the Hercules BE-3 solid rocket motor powered Alcyone fifth stage once.

In 1964 the San Marco Project, led by the Sapienza University of Rome, started using the Scout vehicle to launch Italian, US and British satellites from the Broglio Space Center's San Marco launch platform off the coast of Kenya. It launched San Marco, Explorer and Ariel satellites in ten launches total, with the San Marco 1 launching from Wallops.

In 1992 the SXB3 experimental rocket launched from Salto di Quirra testing a central PAP-12 booster with two dummy side boosters for the development of the San Marco Scout. A mockup for the launch vehicle was built using an Algol center stage, with 4 Algol side boosters, but was stored at the Kenya site indefinitely while favoring the development of the Vega rocket.