SEAS Rocket Team places 2nd in Inaugural Spaceport American Cup

June 25, 2017
Alt Text

 

The SEAS Rocket Team competed in the Inaugural Spaceport America Cup, held June 20-24 in Las Cruces, NM. They launched a student-designed-and-built sounding rocket to 10,000 feet above the ground in a collegiate competition with students from 91 top engineering universities, including teams from Brazil, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey, and Canada. The SEAS Rocket Team placed second in the Space Dynamics Laboratory payload challenge out of 40 schools that entered the payload challenge. The team’s rocket, code named “Project Armadillo,” carried a 4-kg payload consisting of a reaction wheel that controls rocket rotation as it climbs to apogee (maximum altitude). The system worked very well, allowing the team to place better than MIT, Stanford, and numerous other top schools in payload competition. Prof. Murray Snyder (MAE) is the team’s faculty advisor.