Project Persephone

Sounding rocket - a rocket intended to reach high altitudes on suborbital trajectories, for studying the upper atmosphere, near-Earth space, and microgravity.

Because drop towers provide only very short periods of microgravity?, Project Persephone might need to use sounding rockets to verify the operation of telebots, and small-scale test deployments of inflatable space structures.

Sounding rockets can provide minutes of microgravity, which can be enough time for teleoperator technicians to determine whether the skills they've developed for microgravity telebotic operation using simulators transfer to more realistic conditions, when they are controlling real telebots. Inflatable space structures might be extensively simulated, and the more rapid processes might be observable in microgravity in drop tower experiments, but certain processes, such as quick hardening of structures under real space conditions, might nevertheless require minutes.