Acknowledgements

The Editors are grateful to the Project Scientists and the peer reviewers in the various sounding rocket programmes, in particular to: Prof Dr Ing H. Ahlborn, University of Hamburg and Prof Dr V. Blüm, University of Bochum (for TEXUS); Prof Dr G. Frohberg, Technical University of Berlin (for ESA TEXUS, MASER and MAXUS); Dr J. Vreeburg, NLR (for ESA MASER); Prof Dr J. Richter, RWTH, Aachen (for MAXUS 1). We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the Project Managers: H. J. Pompe and W.-R. Kübler (DARA TEXUS); D. Frimout (ESA MASER); W. Herfs (ESA TEXUS, MASER and MAXUS). Thanks must also be expressed to all of the scientists who have participated in the sounding rocket programmes, and to the contractors and consultants for their excellent co-operation.

For all experiments, the flight hardware and the flights themselves were funded by ESA and/or DARA. The investigators were financially supported by the national space agencies of Italy (ASI), The Netherlands (SRON), France (CNES) and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich.

The help of DASA, DLR, Fokker Space and CCM in providing the original illustrations is gratefully acknowledged.