00:00For our purposes we'll start on the northern part of North America's east coast.
00:04The Wallops Flight Facility is operated by one of the most important space research
00:08institutions in the United States, the Goddard Space Flight Center.
00:12Wallops is actually older than NASA itself, technically.
00:16Because when Wallops was founded in 1945, NASA was still called NACA.
00:22The facility is located on the Delmarva Peninsula in Virginia and was especially
00:26important for the development of space flight capabilities as part of the Mercury program.
00:31In the late 1950s and early 1960s, over the decades, Wallops has been and still is one
00:37of the most important testing grounds for US agencies. In addition to various military
00:42capabilities that are developed and tested there, Wallops is also an important base for research.
00:47On six launchpads, flight characteristics are studied and all kinds of data are collected
00:52using suborbital sounding rockets and weather balloons for the benefit of meteorology,
00:58aviation and space flight.
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