Nike Deacon

American test vehicle. Two-stage rocket using surplus Nike boosters and Deacon sounding rocket upper stage. The combination was much cheaper than Aerobee, and unlike Rockoon could be launched from fixed launchers in two and a half hours. It was used for 'falling sphere' air density studies, atmospheric soundings, and for heat transfer studies launched from NACA Wallops Island.

From NASA SOUNDING ROCKETS, 1958-1968 - A Historical Summary, NASA SP-4401, 1971, by William R. Corliss

When the Deacon and Cajun rockets were combined with the solid-propellant booster of the Nike I guided missile, two very capable sounding rockets evolved: the Nike-Deacon (called DAN for Deacon and Nike) and Nike-Cajun (CAN). DAN could take a 23-kg (50-lb) payload to 111 km (69 mi), while the higher performance CAN could carry the same payload to 167 km (104 mi).

The original mating of the Nike and Deacon was carried out by NACA PARD personnel in 1953 as an in-house project with later financial support from the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories (AFCRL). The objective of the NACA work was again the acceleration of model rockets and aircraft to high Mach numbers. The first of these firings took place on November 19, 1953, at Wallops Island. The Nike-Deacon began its sounding rocket career in 1954 at a meeting of the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel. Panel Chairman James A. Van Allen asked the NASA representative, William J. O'Sullivan, from Langley Research Center, if one of the PARD vehicles might not be less expensive and more easily launched than the Aerobee. O'Sullivan recommended the Nike-Deacon. Subsequently the Aeronautical Engineering Department of the University of Michigan, which was developing upper atmosphere instrumentation for AFCRL, was funded by AFCRL to convert the PARD Nike-Deacon into a sounding rocket. The new rocket was launched from Wallops Island for the first time on April 8,1955. The Nike-Deacons and Nike-Cajuns were cheap and reliable, the basic rocket motors having been developed and well tested during their military and NACA careers. Further, they were simple and easy to use - scientists could take them wherever targets of opportunity existed.