Captain's log.

It seems like everything here is a deep hue of red.

The iron in the soil and dirt really just coats everything.

All the cars, you can tell who's new.

Those cars are still white.

People who've been here for a while have all been coated with a

fine mist of red dust.

Welcome back to another Field Notes episode of NASA's Curious Universe.

NASA experts travel to some incredible places to learn more about our planet and the universe around us.

Last summer, NASA science writer Miles Hatfield visited Nullin Boy, Australia, to cover a sounding rocket launch from a brand new rocket range.

You might remember sounding rockets from our season four episode, up and away with sounding rockets.

They're small, uncrewed rockets that shoot off to orbit on short journeys. They study everything from our own atmosphere to the stars.

Less than an hour after taking off, they come parachuting back to Earth,

with payloads of data collected during their flights.

Let's listen in with Miles, as he prepares for and witnesses NASA's first rocket launch from this brand new Southern Hemisphere launch site,

operated by Equatorial Launch Australia.

I'm Miles Hadfield. I'm a science writer here at NASA.

I write about heliophysics, which is the science of the sun and the sun's connections to everything around us in space.

Nolumboi was this little mining town. There was one grocery store.

It did not look like what I thought Australia would look like. It was cloudy and rained a lot. Nullumboi is at the northeastern

tip of the northern territories in Australia, where the desert meets the sea. Nolomboy is not

what you think of, or at least not what I think of, when I think of Australia. It's much more

...