Sounding Rocket Launch

Narration:

Transcript:

Welcome, this is the Wallops Range Control Center, and it’s the heartbeat of all operations that happen on launch day for our rocket launches. I am the NASA Test Director. You can imagine that position is like an orchestra conductor making sure that all of those different pieces of the operation are coming together during the countdown and lining up for T-0. Over here is what we call our Data Quality Room, where the radar data and telemetry data from the rocket are coming in real time so that we can assess where the rocket is or its velocity, position, and all the metric details about the rocket. So when entering the camera station, you have the pleasure of going through this extra-large door. And then we come up via this nice control panel. We can open up both of the dome halves independently or together like I am now, and this gives us a full 360-degree view of our surroundings. This is one of our IFLOT’s. We use this for tracking rockets during launches. These can be difficult, depending on the weather, but on clear sky nights it’s usually a little bit better.