This Incredible Footage From a GoPro Attached to a NASA Rocket Will Blow Your Mind

Absolutely out of this world.

In November 2015 NASA launched a slender test rocket from its spaceport in New Mexico. The rocket, TechCrunch reported, was owned by UP Aerospace and was launched as part of a NASA program called Flight Opportunities, which flight-tests space tech developed by the government as well as industrial and educational institutions. 

A GoPro was strapped to the 20-foot SpaceLoft-10 rocket and the resulting video from the camera’s trip into the upper reaches of the atmosphere has gone viral for a reason: it’s absolutely breathtaking to watch.

Just after it left the launchpad the rocket went through the required spin-stabilization phase, visually dizzying but necessary to maintain altitude control. 

Then it dropped NASA’s small Maraia Earth Return capsule, which according to NASA’s press release may well one day be “an inexpensive, autonomous International Space Station-based vehicle to provide on-demand return of small scientific and engineering payloads, or function as an ISS-deployed entry technology test bed.”

There were additional experiments on board testing various cutting-edge avionics projects, but as you watch the video tech considerations vanish as you get a powerful sense of what its like to take such an epic ride to a point about 75 miles above the Earth. 

There are plenty of both awesome and inadvisable ways to use first-person video footage — this has to be one of the coolest we’ve seen in a while.

h/t TechCrunch, NASA

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