Aerospace engineering students at Monash University in Victoria have placed second in the 30,000ft flight division at the Australian University Rocketry Competition (AURC).
The team, known as Monash High Powered Rocketry (HPR), was one of many student teams from across Australia and New Zealand that undertook the design, build and launch of a single stage, high powered rocket using a commercial off-the-shelf solid fuel propulsion motor.
“We’re especially proud of the successful flight of Hyperion, our 30,000ft entry,” said team lead and aerospace engineering student Meaghan Munro.
“Due to limited access to testing, Hyperion was our first ever flight to reach supersonic speeds. Its motor was four times more powerful than any we had flown before, and it was triple the altitude.
"There were a lot of nerves prior to Hyperion’s flight, so watching it fly so beautifully was incredibly rewarding.”
However, when it came to the team's 10,000ft rocket Athena, not all went according to plan with a late night loss of GPS data that prevented the rocket from being located until after launch the next morning.
Despite this, Monash HPR received the top mark in the technical report, almost 100% for their oral presentations and a very successful flight of Hyperion to almost 26,000 feet.
While the 2019 competition might be over, the HPR team is already looking ahead to 2020, with plans to enter the AURC again and to also take on the Spaceport America Cup.
"The team is going right back to our roots and beginning proof of concept of a few new ideas on small scale rockets,” Meaghan explained.
“We hope to begin development of our attitude control systems as well as the development of our own hybrid rocket engines."