The School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Rocket Team competed in the Inaugural Spaceport America Cup last week in Las Cruces, N.M.
The student team—Adrian Haber, a rising junior electrical and computer engineering major, and mechanical and aerospace engineering majors Thomas Susi, a rising junior, Jeremey Waldron, a rising junior, and David Kohanski, B.S. '17—launched a student-designed and -built sounding rocket to 10,000 feet above the ground in a collegiate competition with students from 91 top engineering universities, including teams from Brazil, Switzerland, Egypt, Turkey and Canada.
The SEAS Rocket Team placed second in the Space Dynamics Laboratory payload challenge out of 40 schools that entered the payload challenge. The team’s rocket, code named “Project Armadillo,” carried a four-kilogram payload consisting of a reaction wheel that controls rocket rotation as it climbs to apogee or maximum altitude.
The system worked well, allowing the team to place better than Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and other top schools in payload competition. Professor Murray Snyder is the team’s faculty advisor.