On the night of Aug. 1, Christopher Holbert did something unusual.
To the sound of crickets, he put a blanket down in his backyard in Torrance, laid on his back, and gazed at the sky.
“Thankfully no one peeked over the fence,” Holbert said with a laugh.
Henry Toler, Holbert’s fellow senior at Junipero Serra High School in Gardena, also started exhibiting uncharacteristic behavior beginning Aug. 1.
“Every night,” said Toler of Carson, “I sat on the roof and just looked up.”
Holbert and Toler hadn’t suddenly become UFO nuts.
Rather, they and three other Serra seniors — Anderson Pecot, Travis Leonard, and Isaiah Dunn — were focused on the skies because a science project they worked on for months had been launched Aug. 1 on a SpaceX rocket as part of NASA’s “International Space Station Program.” Serra was one of nine high schools nationwide…
