The Star: August 10, 2023

The Star Thursday August 10 2023
14
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Aerospace team rockets to success in US
A TEAM OF students are
coming back to earth after
building and launching a
winning rocket 10km into the
sky at an international aerospace
competition.
The Canterbury University
team won their category and
placed third overall at the recent
Spaceport America Cup in New
Mexico in the United States.
The event is the world’s largest
student rocket engineering conference
and competition, with
158 teams taking part this year
from 24 countries.
The 10 students who took part
are members of UC Aerospace,
a student-led club sponsored by
UC’s Mechanical Engineering
department. They were the only
team from New Zealand competing
and to win their category
they had to design, build and
launch a rocket that reached as
close as possible to the target of
30,000 feet (about 10km).
Team leader Alicia Smith said
they went into the competition
aiming to win and were thrilled
with the result.
“We’ve put UC on the international
stage as a highly
competitive rocket engineering
team, and we’re looking forward
to what the club achieves next.
“We worked incredibly hard
for six months building the rocket,
testing all the subsystems, and
LIFT-OFF: The winning Canterbury University Aerospace Spaceport America Cup team
included Alicia Smith (left), Jack Davies, Reuben Van Dorp and Avalon Beker, and six others.
doing test launches to validate
everything. It was awesome to
watch it launch in the New Mexico
desert and to have everything
work so well.”
The Kiwis were up against
teams from some of the most
prestigious universities in the
world, and many teams were two
or three times larger than theirs.
“Winning our category and
coming third overall is definitely
a big accomplishment that we’re
pretty proud of,” said Smith.
Smith, who works at Dawn
Aerospace part-time, will finish
a Bachelor of Engineering with
Honours in Mechanical Engineering,
with a minor in Aerospace
Engineering, at the end of
the year. She has already lined up
a full-time job at Rocket Lab in
Auckland starting next year.
“I think being in the UC Aerospace
club which I joined in my
second year and was president
of last year and doing this work
designing and building rockets,
is what’s really helped me in my
job interviews and set me apart,”
she said.
“What draws me to working
in aerospace is wanting to know
what’s out there and how we can
benefit humanity with what we
do and discover in space.”
The UC Aerospace team
included Smith, Avalon Beker,
Henry Eden-Mann, Reuben
Van Dorp, Jacob Saunders, Jack
Davies, Pieter Leigh, James
Graham, Caleb Melchers and
Peter Lee.
Lee, the UC Aerospace president,
said it was a huge honour
for the team to represent New
Zealand in this year’s event.
“Our involvement shows the
aerospace capabilities of both
UC and the country on the world
stage.”
The competition began well
ahead of the event because every
team had to provide milestones,
technical reports, and safety
reviews prior to launch, he said.
The students designed and
built all aspects of the rocket
within the tight deadlines of the
competition and on top of their
academic course work.
In February last year, UC
Aerospace students launched
a rocket at Birdlings Flat in an
attempt to exceed the altitude
record for a student-led rocket
programme. Unfortunately, lost
data meant the students could
not confirm if they had exceeded
the record. Safety measures were
in place, after a botched launch
in 2019.
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