

Contrails from rockets 3 and 4 from NASA’s ATREX launch Tuesday morning. Taken at Sandy Point, Md. ( Andrew Murdock photography )

The five launches were completed in slightly more than five minutes, spaced about 80 seconds apart.

Each of the ATREX (Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment) mission’s rockets emitted a chemical tracer that painted milky white streaks in the upper atmosphere.

These contrails could be seen as far south as Wilmington, NC, west to Charleston, W. Va., and north to Buffalo, NY NASA said.



View Photo Gallery: Almost two weeks after the first scrubbed attempt, NASA successfully launched 5 rockets early March 27 from its Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to study winds in the upper atmosphere.

Here’s a cool time lapse video of the contrails from the launch, taken from Columbus, New Jersey:

NASA ATREX Launch from Columbus, NJ. Canon 50d, 8 sec, ISO 800, F3.2, Cropped 17mm. Posted to YouTube by leeedomphoto

Here’s the launch video from NASA

In the above video, the launch of the 5 rockets can be seen at the following intervals:

1st launch at :37

2nd launch at 1:57

3rd launch at 3:16

4th launch at 4:35

5th launch at 5:56



Chemical tracer from NASA rockets over Fairfax, Virginia. See full set of images. (Andrew Albosta)



The aftermath, four rocket trails - Sandy Point, Md. at 5:10 a.m. ( Andrew Murdock photography )

Related: NASA ATREX mission website

NASA to launch 5 rockets in 5 minutes from Wallops, Va. tonight (maybe)