Rocketry team results out of this world!

In its first-ever rocket competition appearance, the University of Windsor Rocketry Team finished third overall out of 82 teams. 

The team traveled to New Mexico to compete in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition’s (IREC) 2017 Spaceport America Cup, held June 20 to 24. UWindsor competed against 44 teams in a category that required students to design, build, and launch a rocket carrying a payload of four kilograms to a target altitude of 10,000 feet. Teams were awarded points based on written reports, a podium session and how close their rockets’ maximum altitude was to the target.

During competition, the UWindsor rocket reached 10,533 feet, which was within 3.8 per cent of the team’s predicted altitude. UWindsor was one of the three leading schools to score in the 800-point range. The fourth-place team finished with 764 points out of 1,000.

Event organizers were especially impressed with UWindsor’s custom-made trajectory model the students created with MATLAB software. The team was one of 24 schools invited to present in a podium session during competition.

“It was an unbelievable experience,” says Shannon Bosilac, a mechanical engineering student in the aerospace option.

 “Seeing rockets is an experience in itself, but being able to actually go there and launch our own rocket was a dream. I never imagined I would be able to go and launch my own rocket.