NASA Rocket Launch Could Be Visible In New Jersey Monday Night

NEW JERSEY — After three postponements, NASA is scheduled to launch a Black Brant XII sounding rocket from their Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 8:04 p.m. Monday, and there's a chance residents along the eastern Seaboard — including those in the Garden State — will be able to watch it streak by.

If skies are clear locally and the launch proceeds as scheduled, look to the southeast about 30 to 60 seconds after the 8:04 p.m. launch time.

Rainy weather forced NASA to scrub launches planned for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. NASA has several other potential launch windows scheduled between now and May 16.

The rocket will release a barium vapor about 9-10 minutes into the flight north of Bermuda at an altitude of more than 200 miles. NASA will be studying the vapor release with diagnostic instrumentation onboard the rocket.

The KiNet-X experiment consists of a single rocket launch carrying seven separable payloads. Diagnostic instrumentation is carried on the main payload and four small subpayloads, while the barium vapor clouds will be released from two additional larger subpayloads, NASA said in a news release.

This allows for a multiple-point view of the disturbances created by the barium vapor releases. The four small subpayloads, nicknamed "Bobs", each about the size of a two-liter soda bottle, make measurements of the space environment through which the barium-vapor-induced disturbance travels.

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