Troop 466 Eagle Lifts Off (so to speak)

One of our Eagle Scouts, Tonku Gopal, wrote to us:

So this week I was lucky enough to participate in a rocket launch at NASA Wallops Flight Facility as a member of the Naval Research Lab optics team. To anyone who looked into the southeastern sky from 7:46-8:06 p.m. EDT you may have caught some odd flashes in the sky. Apparently some others saw it as well.

Here's a link to a story cnn posted on the launch:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/09/20/strange.lights/index.html

Attached are two pictures of the rocket taking off, sent to us by the project manager. It's a four stage rocket, and its really quite something to watch the different stages go off and slowly come back down to earth. I've got some pictures I took myself of the fourth stage going off and spreading a dust cloud into the ionosphere.

-Tonku