NASA and Navy Set World Record for Most Engines in One Rocket Flight

NASA and the Naval Research Lab have set a world record for the highest number of rocket engines used on a single flight: a total of 44 engines, which flew on a sounding rocket last year. On Sept. 16, 2015, a Black Brant rocket carried an experiment to study "dusty plasmas": an electrically charged mixture of gas and bits of dust that can occur naturally in the mesosphere (the region of the atmosphere about 30 to 50 miles, or 50 to 80 kilometers, above the surface). Thirty-seven rocket engines w