More than 50 student and faculty teams are sending experiments into space as part of NASA’s RockOn and RockSat-C student flight programs. The annual student mission, “RockOn,” is scheduled to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia, on a Terrier-Improved Orion sounding rocket Thursday, June 20, with a launch window that opens at 5:30 a.m. EDT.
The launch window for the mission is 5:30-9:30 a.m. EDT, Thursday June 20, with a backup day of June 21. The Wallops Visitor Center’s launch viewing area will open at 4:30 a.m. A livestream of the mission will begin 15 minutes before launch on the Wallops YouTube channel. Launch updates also are available via the Wallops Facebook page.
The circular areas in the featured photo show where and when people may see the rocket launch in the sky, depending on cloud cover. The different colored sections indicate the time (in seconds) after liftoff that the sounding rocket may be visible.
The RockOn workshop is an introductory flight opportunity for community college and university students. RockOn participants spend a week at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, where they are guided through the process of building and launching an experiment aboard a sounding rocket.
“RockOn provides students and faculty with authentic, hands-on experiences tied to an actual launch into space from a NASA facility,” said Chris Koehler, on contract with NASA as RockOn’s principal investigator. “These experiences are instrumental in the creation of our next STEM workforce.”
Information and Photo Courtesy of NASA