NASA Rocket Launch Tonight Will Be Visible Across East Coast

by M.C. Millman

A rocket mission, the first of its kind, will be visible across the East Coast today between 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

The 59-foot-tall Rocket Lab USA Electron rocket is expected to lift off from Launch Complex 2 at Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island in Virginia. 

The island has been utilized by the commercial launch industry for forty years. According to the NASA Wallop website, "NASA's Wallops Flight Facility provides agile, low-cost flight and launch range services to meet government and commercial sector needs for accessing flight regimes worldwide from the Earth's surface to the moon and beyond." 

Wallop flights include research aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, and high-altitude balloons to suborbital and orbital rockets. 

Today's mission will deploy radio frequency monitoring satellites for HawkEye 360.

The ongoing NASA Wallop program has provided important data to support the scientific community. The nearly 2,500 missions carried out thus far have significantly added to scientific knowledge in galactic astronomy, solar physics, planetary atmospheres, high-energy physics, and other disciplines. NASA says that the low-cost, quick-response experiments remain vital to carrying out their mission.

Photo Credit: NASA