Five thousand rockets were launched into the air Wednesday, not only to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing but also to set a Guinness World Record.
Astronauts, NASA engineers and eager young campers witnessed the event organized by the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, a city dedicated to space exploration.
“Huntsville is the rocket city,” Randall Robinson of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center told InsideEdition.com. “We work on propulsion, we design engines, we design all those things that get the rockets, get the shuttle, everything up to space.”
In fact, the designs for the Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo 11 crew into space exactly 50 years ago have their roots in Huntsville too.
The ones they used during their Guinness World Record attempt, however, were much smaller, at about 15 inches long and weighing about an ounce and a half, even with the rocket inside.
The previous record was set in November 2018, when 4,231 model rockets were launched during a European Space Science Convention held in the Netherlands.
The U.S. Space & Rocket Center said it wanted to hold its own rocket launching to encourage young scientists to follow their dreams.
“You could be part of this experience and something like this could be the key to the next person who has a great idea or a great invention and maybe that first person who sets foot on Mars,” Robinson said.
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