A team of 10 current and former students from the UC Aerospace Club showcased their extraordinary talent at the Spaceport America Cup in June. The team achieved a remarkable 1st place victory in the 30,000 ft COTS category and rounding off the podium in 3rd place overall among 158 competing teams.
Judges were impressed by the rocket's exceptional build quality and the team's technical expertise. Rising early and being among the first to receive clearance for the launch pad on the competition's opening day, the team executed a successful launch with air brakes deployed to control apogee. The rocket achieved an altitude of 30,118ft, remarkably close to the 30,000ft target, with a mere 0.39% margin of error. This achievement positioned the team 5th across all categories for the closest to target apogee.
The recovery system performed flawlessly, and the rocket safely landed approximately 5km from the pad. A thorough post-flight check revealed no major issues, and the rocket's recovery in the New Mexico desert took approximately 3 hours.
Apart from their stellar performance, the team's participation in the competition facilitated valuable connections with international counterparts. The experience proved to be a rich learning opportunity for the team. Their achievements at the Spaceport America Cup have propelled the University of Canterbury onto the global stage as a competitive student engineering force, a source of immense pride for the team.
Reflecting on their success, the UC Aero team expressed their delight, saying; "We’re very happy with the result, placing first in our category and 3rd overall. The team has worked incredibly hard for the last 6 months building the rocket, testing all the subsystems, and doing test launches to validate everything.
It was awesome to watch it launch in the New Mexico desert and to have everything work so well. It’s definitely a big accomplishment that we are pretty proud of."
The competition saw teams from some of the world's most prestigious universities, many of them larger in size with over a hundred team members, making UC Aerospace's accomplishment all the more noteworthy. C-Tech and UC Aerospace jointly celebrate this milestone, of carbon innovation and aerospace excellence.
Launch photo: UC Aerospace | © Alex Heffer
All other photos: © UC Aerospace volunteers