RockOn! student sounding rocket launches perfectly from Wallops

The launch of an Improved Orion sounding rocket carrying more than 70 experiments contributed by university students went off perfectly Friday morning at 8:32 AM.

After a brief launch delay due to boats near the launch area, the countdown resumed.

“Typically, students from across the country descend upon Wallops days before launch to learn about rocketry and building experiments for spaceflight through the week-long RockOn! workshop,” said Chris Koehler, director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. “This year to maintain social distancing due to COVID-19, the workshop was conducted virtually.”

This year there were 102 participants.  Colorado Space Grant sent the participants the materials needed to participate in the workshop and build their experiments.  The participants then shipped them to Colorado for checkout and integration. A team from Colorado delivered the experiments to Wallops.

The 36-foot long two-stage rocket will carry 32 experiments (measuring acceleration, humidity, pressure, temperature and radiation counts) from the RockOn! Program, eight experiments in the RockSat-C program, and more than 60 small cubes with experiments developed by middle school and high school students as part of the Cubes in Space program.

The rocket deployed the experiments, which then descended via parachute into the Atlantic Ocean where they were recovered and analyzed.

The full video of the launch is available below. The 10 second countdown begins at 52:00.