An amateur rocket set a brand new record last month, soaring far higher than Mount Everest.
On April 16, students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University launched a small rocket to a maximum altitude of 47,732 feet (14,548 meters) — about 1.6 times higher than Everest, which stands 29,032 feet (8,849 m) tall. The feat also greater than doubled the previous record set by U.S. undergraduate and collegiate amateurs, which was 22,000 feet (6,706 m).
“I fell to my knees, sobbing, from witnessing such an incredible feat,” student Dalton Songer said in a May 11 statement (opens in latest tab), evoking the 4,000 hours of labor that went into the development, testing and launch.
“Everyone was celebrating in an enormous group hug,” Songer said. “That moment was special — something that only happens when a dedicated group of people come together and make something incredible occur against all odds.”
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The launch, from the Mojave Desert in California, is not the best ever by amateurs, as other efforts have even reached what is taken into account space itself (roughly 62 miles, or 100 kilometers). For instance, an undergraduate team from the University of Southern California sent their Traveler IV booster beyond the Kármán line in 2019, which likely set a record for college kids overall, officials said on the time.
Still, of their category (undergraduate liquid-fueled rocket launch), the Embry-Riddle students shone. Their rocket — named Deneb, after a star within the constellation Cygnus — broke the sound barrier easily, reaching Mach 1.5 (1,150 mph or 1,850 kph) during a 26.1-second flight. It took three scrubbed launch attempts to get there, forcing the whole team to camp for an additional night within the desert.
Songer said the launch was value it. The scholars, from Embry-Riddle’s Prescott, Arizona campus, sheltered in a bunker for the launch but could still see it: “Watching Deneb take off was essentially the most exhilarating moment of my life,” Songer said. “All of us ran out of the bunker to observe as Deneb burned further and further into the morning sky. It was breathtaking.”
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Several graduating students from the team have already been accepted for full-time jobs at locations like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Firefly Aerospace, said Elliott Bryner, Embry-Riddle’s director of the propulsion laboratory and rocket test complex. “I actually have been working with this group of scholars for the past 4 years, they usually are incredible engineers,” Bryner said.
The team, dubbed the Cygnus Suborbitals, began their work during a a senior capstone propulsion design course co-taught by Daniel White and Jonathan Adams. In addition they formed a part of the Rocket Development Lab (RDL), which is a student organization promoting rocketry and hands-on experience at Embry-Riddle.
Other students contributed 3,000 hours to the project through the RDL, and the hassle also received donations from firms like Firefly and Lockheed Martin. Deneb followed from a predecessor rocket called Altair, which was delayed on account of the pandemic after which exploded during an October 2022 launch attempt.
“We learned so much from that rocket,” said Zoe Brand, a team member who tested Deneb’s engine, said in the identical statement. “Altair was very heavy. So, we deliberately focused on making our rocket lighter by integrating the propellant tanks into the structural rigidity of the rocket.”