Because of rainclouds in our area, we missed this spectacular light show last evening. However, SpaceWeather.Com, published a couple of nice images of the light show.
Photos from SpaceWeather.Com
From Spaceflight Now:
Six tiny satellites sped into space Friday evening aboard an ultra-fast rocket booster, beginning a five-year mission to examine Earth’s atmosphere and the underlying hints of climate change by employing a novel technique.
The $100 million COSMIC mission that partners the U.S. and Taiwan roared away from the wet and foggy Space Launch Complex 8 on the southern end of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 6:40 p.m. PDT (9:40 p.m. EDT; 0140 GMT).
The Orbital Sciences Minotaur rocket was gone in a flash, almost instantly disappearing from view of launch pad cameras. The liftoff was delayed an hour-and-a-half after an initial countdown attempt was aborted because of a problem with the system monitoring rocket data.