On June 29 at Wallop’s Flight Facility in Virginia, NASA launched a rocket into the Earth’s ionosphere. The goal was to make brightly colored clouds and watch them as they moved around in the air currents. The rocket was supposed to launch back in May but all previous attempts at launching were stopped due to cloudy weather and poor visibility. Once they launched the rocket it flew up to about 96 miles in altitude where it jettisoned a series of canisters filled with barium, strontium and cupric oxide. The result was a series of brightly colored clouds drifting in the upper atmosphere.

The reason behind this experiment was to study how particles move through Earth’s ionosphere. This is the layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that is ionized by solar and cosmic radiation and it stretches from 46 to 621 miles above our heads. It also includes the exosphere, the thermosphere and part of the mesosphere. Scientists are hoping to learn about how particles spread through the atmosphere at this height.

Here is what it looked like

Once the canisters were jettisoned at about 96 to 124 miles they released the chemical payload into the air. That may sound dangerous or even unhealthy for anyone living underneath but this is a very small amount of chemicals. It’s actually less than what would be released in a standard fireworks show.

This infographic shows a few details on how the experiment works

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NASA Clouds