Silke Jasso
As one of its favorite nicknames reminds the world, Houston will always be Space City.
Videos by Rare
We are home to NASA’s mission control in the Johnson Space Center, waiting to answer the call if there’s a space problem.
Here in Houston, anything NASA does grabs our interest, whether it’s celebrating the anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing or starting a kickstarter to refurbish the historic mission control.
And, since everything is bigger in Texas, so is our claim over the federal space agency; but Clear Lake isn’t the only place it calls home.
In fact, they do some really cool things in other states — including controlling the weather.
If you live in Mississippi, for instance, you likely experienced the effects of a NASA-created hydrogen-based rain cloud, given its common shuttle tests at a 125,000-acre site in the state’s wetlands.
When they run a test, an almost-sci-fi event occurs: as the shuttle “launches,” simulated without actually lifting off, exhaust plumes waft into the sky.
While they may seem like pollutants, looks can be deceiving because the exhaust, like any other cloud, is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, the ingredients in water.
RELATED: Watch Apollo 11 moon landing footage
About an hour after the test, the rain starts to fall back down to earth.
NASA loves to make it rain.
