There is a rocket launch filled with Christmas spirit.
You can watch Xyla Foxlin and Joe Barnard launch a Christmas tree from the California desert this year.
Foxlin shows how she and her team made a "Christmissile" in three days and then took it out to the Friends of Amateur Rocketry test site for launch. The tree was adorned with 300 ornaments designed by Foxlin, lights and a parachute-toting star topper to help it float back to earth. It was powered by a heavy-duty solid rocket motor.
Foxlin said in her video that the tree was put into the booster in hopes that the motor would launch it into the air.
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In a separate 15-minute video (opens in new tab), Barnard shows how he engineered a camera deployment system to film the launch using Insta360 X3 cameras (opens in new tab), which popped out and had parachutes of their own for recovery. He also oversaw the lighting for the tree, which featured sleek color-changing LED strings. The sunset launch itself is spectacular, with the 40-pound (18 kilograms) tree rising up off its launch rail, then tilting over to one side before deploying its parachute and descending back to Earth.
"It really put the missile in mistletoe," Barnard said in his video (opens in new tab).
Related: Christmas night sky 2022: The planets pay a holiday visit
You have to watch both videos to find out how great the Christmas tree launch was. The Reinvented Magazine hopes to inspire interest in science, math and engineering among young women. The Season's Yeeting ornaments and mission patches are being sold by the group's Reinvented Magazine to raise money for their projects.
Engineering is a lot of fun, but it's even more fun when everyone is welcome in it.
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