NASA set to launch rocket for student projects Friday in Virginia

PHILADELPHIA - Did you know that NASA launches rockets in different parts of the county?

A few hours south of the Delaware Valley, NASAs sends up rockets with scientific experiments from Wallops Island, Virginia. Wallops Island is about an hour south of Ocean City, Maryland and next to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, an area famous for its wild ponies.

A rocket was scheduled to launch around sunrise Thursday morning, but weather delayed the launch until Friday.

Sometimes, we can see the exhaust clouds from these rocket launches in our region, but that won't be the case with Friday morning's launch for most of us. The rocket is too tiny for us to see the exhaust clouds in Pa., N.J., or even most of Del. You'll have to be in southern Sussex County, in Delaware, to see some exhaust clouds.

This rocket will send information for various student projects, and these student projects will measure data as the rocket climbs to the edge of space. The rocket will end up getting about 75 miles off the ground before it falls back down to earth and into the Atlantic Ocean. At that point, NASA scientists will retrieve the student projects and data measuring devices.

Two local universities will be sending up experiments: Temple University and the University of Delaware.

Students from Temple want to understand how less gravity affects the interaction of sound and light. University of Delaware students will study some weather data and use that to examine how thick the air is higher up. NASA explains those projects in much greater detail.

If you'd like to see the rocket launch, NASA will have a live stream on their YouTube.

You can also head down and watch the rocket launch from Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. There will be more rocket launches this summer to see down at Wallops Island, as well.