The eyes of folks in Southern Delaware and across lower Delmarva were drawn to the sky late yesterday afternoon.
Readers contacted First State Update wondering what the strange red glow overhead was. As far as we can tell It was not aliens.
The mystery glow was actually created by a three-stage suborbital sounding rocket that was launched from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia Eastern Shore.
After flying to an altitude of several hundred miles and about 500 miles off-shore, the rocket’s payload released a small quantity of vapor into the near-vacuum of space. There is no danger to public health or the Earth’s environment from the vapor release, according to NASA.
The launch was to study ionization in space just beyond the reaches of Earth’s atmosphere and was conducted for the Department of Defense.
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