MR. Hazell has outlined some of the future improvements both in performance and in experimental facilities—such as attitude measurement or control— which it is hoped to be able to offer for Upper Atmosphere Research in the sounding rocket Skylark. I propose to try to look further ahead and, in particular, into the future possibilities in the United Kingdom of upper atmosphere and space research in earth satellites.

But before doing this I should like to rehearse briefly some of the arguments which suggest that sounding rockets and earth satellites will have a complementary part to play in upper atmosphere and space research in the future.