Subj : Canterbury University's aerospace team aims high at US event
To   : All
From : News
Date : Thu Jun 13 2024 01:03 pm

By Katie Stevenson, 1News Reporter
5:00am

The countdown's on for Canterbury University's aerospace team as they head
overseas with hopes of a rocketing success.


They're competing in Spaceport America, the world's largest university rocket
engineering competition.


The team was today packing up their precious rocket cargo, ahead of their
departure to Southern New Mexico on Friday.


"One hundred and fifty universities from around the world design and build a
rocket, get together, do a bunch of technical reporting and have a conference
and then rocket launch competition" said project lead James Graham.


The Canterbury group were the only New Zealanders competing, with the aim to
get their creation to 30,000 feet.


"Which is pretty high, roughly the height of commercial airplanes," said team
member and student Darcy Green.


Fellow student Elliott Alloo said their rocket reaches 2400km/h.


"That's roughly twice the speed of sound and it will reach its targets at
30,000 feet in about 40 seconds, and it pulls about 25g, so that's 25 times
gravity," he said.


The team hoped to better last year's performance.


"Last year we came first in our category and third overall," said Graham.


Confidence soaring for 2024
"We're going to win this thing," said Alloo.


Testing was carried out in Hamilton last month where the rocket reached
20,000 feet.


Aloo said the teams felt like they were in a good spot.


"I was testing essentially how our air brakes control system can cope with
the high g's that it endures during flight, and.... we've had some really
good results from that, we're really confident with our electronics and we
think it will survive well during flight."


New Mexico's temperature was a complicating factor, where it was forecast to
reach high thirties during the competition.


"We have to design all our internals to be able to handle that heat, when
we're in New Zealand, we can't obviously test that from being outside, so we
have to put things in ovens and make sure things work as expected," said
Green.


If all goes to plan, the students were also feeling hopeful about their
futures.


"All of the team members kind of have the goal of working in aerospace when
we graduate, and this is kind of a really good gateway into that," said
Graham.


Green said all the hard work was now done, and it was time to turn their eyes
to America.


"We'll have to see what other teams bring to the table, and hopefully we can
perform well..."


The competition kicks off next week.

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