Move over the musk.
A team of college students from the University of Southern California has broken the world record for the highest altitude reached by an amateur rocket, rising an astonishing 140 miles above Earth.
Students from the University of Southern California's Rocket Propulsion Laboratory Club launched a home-built Aftershock II rocket from the remote Black Rock Desert in Nevada on October 20, reaching the highest altitude of 113 miles above Earth, which was established 20 years ago. broke the previous record.
It also broke the record for the fastest speed reached by an amateur rocket at a blistering 1 mile per second, as confirmed by analysis of the rocket launch last week.
The mission was made possible by the collaboration of about 100 students from a variety of majors, including operations lead and aerospace engineering major Jayna Ribner. According to a university publication.
“This was probably the greatest opportunity we've ever had,” Ribner told the magazine. “We're just college students who have to do homework and cook and prepare groceries, and we just launched a rocket into space. We broke world records and flew a rocket higher than anyone else. [amateur] It has happened before. ”
The rocket mission is run entirely by students (mostly undergraduates) and includes not only the construction and launch of the rocket, but also fundraising, safety procedures, and other external communications beyond the scope of most college students' education. It was
“This is like a small business,” says Professor Paul David Loney, chair of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. “Students who have come out of that lab have gone on to hold leadership positions at all major aerospace companies.”
The students also built their own computer systems and circuit boards from scratch to track the rocket in real time, the university said.
“It's important to know that all of these technologies were developed by the students themselves,” Yannis Yorsos, dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, told the university press. “Everything is done in-house. Our students receive advice from faculty, but they develop everything themselves… We are so proud of them because they can do this on their own. They learn how to transfer this knowledge from one year to another.”
Although this record-breaking rocket launch was only about 6.8 miles short of the altitude allowed for amateur rockets, the students hope to break new records in the club's future.
“Some new members of the club came in and we said to them, 'Hey, this might be the coolest thing we've ever done, but this is what you're going to do. “It's probably not the coolest thing I've ever done,” Ribner said. Said. “This year's freshman class is [has] We have four more years to do what we've been doing and make it even crazier, better, cheaper, and better. ”
