WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. – A NASA Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket launched from Wallops at 5:30 a.m., Thursday.
The rocket carried nearly 700 pounds of student experiments. NASA said 200 university and community college students will get to fly these experiments on the suborbital rocket through the RockOn! and RockSat-C.
The rocket is 36 feet long and the payload weighs 667 pounds. It will fly to nearly 73-miles altitude
The rocket will carry 28 experiments, from several programs, that measuring acceleration, humidity, pressure, temperature and radiation counts, NASA reported. The RockOn! Program participated, as well as several experiments from nine schools in the RockSat-C program and more than 80 small cubes with experiments developed by middle school and high school students as part of the Cubes in Space program, a partnership between idoodlelearning inc. and the Colorado Space Grant Consortium.
The experiments will land via parachute in the Atlantic Ocean and be recovered by boat. The participants should have their experiments returned to them later in the day to begin their data analysis.