HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In 2019, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch with a world record attempt for "Most model rocket kits launched simultaneously."
The launch of 4,923 rockets on July 16, 2019, has now been certified as a Guinness World Record.
78 volunteers working 696 hours over 13 sessions to build the rockets. Twenty volunteers worked 75 hours to build the wood frames on which the rockets were placed.
In honor of the genius of the Rocket City engineers, scientists and technicians who made the Apolllo 11 launch a reality, the Rocket Center attempted to launch 5,000 model rockets simultaneously to break the previous record of 4,231 model rockets launched. That record was set at Teylingen College during a European Space Science Convention in the Netherlands, in summer 2018.
To achieve the record, the Rocket Center had to:
- use commercially available rockets
- build them following basic manufacturer guidelines
- have a record number of rockets pass 30m (~100 feet) in altitude
- have an independent specialist verify the counting method.
Rocket Center staff worked with the Redstone Test Center and UAH to develop a verification method for the altitude requirement. The UAH Systems Management and Production Center used drones and a weather balloon with a stationary camera mounted at 100 feet to verify rockets passing that altitude.
The independent specialists were a team assembled by Chris Crumbly, then-executive director of the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation who has worked in the aerospace field for more than 30 years.