South Orange Kids Send Rockets Flying

South Orange, NJ residents and Camp Horizons campers, Kai Kelly, Sydney Tindall and Noelle Mullins launch their rockets at the recent Camp Horizons Rocket Launch event.  

The rockets were not quite the size of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, but the excitement felt by campers, staff members, families and friends, at the Camp Horizons Rocket Launch, was just as great. 

More than 100 campers launched more than 150 homemade rockets at the event. Prior to the launch, campers spent two weeks creating as many rockets as they were able to build and paint, in preparation for the launch.  Each camper chose from more than 100 model rocket kits, which ranged in difficulty from five steps to over 100 steps and pieces, and also contained engines and parachutes.  Some were six-feet tall. 

At the launch, the crowd looked up, oohed and ahhed, and pointed each time a rocket launched in order to see how high and far they went.  Campers then smiled as they ran through the field, to find their rockets and parachutes.  Some of the rockets went up so high, the kids couldn't see them until they parachuted down to the ground.  

Camp Horizons is located at Newark Academy, in Livingston, NJ.