The Germans launched the largest number of V2 rockets from within the Netherlands from near The Hague. Each mobile rocket unit consisted of 25 special vehicles that moved only during the night to avoid attack from the Allied air force. The rockets were launched in forests to protect them from both wind and enemy aircraft. The first V2 rocket was fired at Paris on September 7, 1944, at 8:30 am. By March 27, 1945, about 5,500 rockets had been fired from the Netherlands. 1)
The first rocket to reach space was a German V2 rocket during a test flight on October 3, 1942. 2)
Penguin is a Norwegian anti-ship cruise missile designed in the early 1960s and adopted by many countries, including the USA. It is the first passive thermal (infrared) guided anti-ship missile. The Penguin (fire-and-forget) has an inertial navigation system (INS) enabling the programming of multiple flight profiles in such a way that the missile is capable of avoiding obstacles, maneuvering between islands, and attacking a target from a different direction than it was launched. 3)
Space Ship One, the first private manned spacecraft, is known for its unusual fuel. In fact, its engine burns rubber. Nitrous oxide was used as an oxidizer. Thanks to the non-explosive fuel, spectators were able to approach the spacecraft just before launch. 4)
A solar sail is a spacecraft propulsion device that uses the pressure of sunlight and solar wind particles. The sail is a space-spanning structure covered with sheets of mylar or Kapton film, a few microns thick. The first probe equipped with such a propulsion system was the Japanese IKAROS mission. The second was NASA's NanoSail-D2, launched on 20 November 2010, which spent 240 days in orbit, “sailing” around the Earth. 5)