On this day in space: Feb. 21, 1931: Germany's 1st liquid-fuel rocket (barely) launches

On Feb. 21, 1931, Germany launched its first liquid-fueled rocket … sort of.

German engineer Johannes Winkler and the H&uuml;ckel-Winkler 1 liquid-fueled rocket, which launched Feb. 21, 1931 — German engineer Johannes Winkler and the Hückel-Winkler 1 liquid-fueled rocket, which launched Feb. 21, 1931. (Image credit: Ullstein Bild/Getty)

The rocket was named Hückel-Winkler 1 after the engineers who designed and built it. Hückel-Winkler 1 was powered by a combination of liquid oxygen and liquid methane. It lifted off from a drilling field near Dessau, Germany on two separate flights.

After the first launch was a failure, the rocket did reach its planned altitude of 500 feet during its second flight three weeks later.

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Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.

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