Hello! It’s been awhile since our last update, but a lot has happened! Last year’s leadership was overwhelmed preparing our competition rocket for the Spaceport America Cup, but this year we have created a new media chair position to ensure we can keep you up to date.
Last year we finished building Nova Somnium, which successfully launched this past summer. We had significantly more student research and development (SRAD) technology than in our inaugural year, successfully implementing our own custom built launch tower, onboard telemetry and ground station, composite couplers and nose cone, fins, parachutes and recovery process, and magnetic dampening experimental payload.
Nova Somnium targeted a 30,000 ft apogee and reached speeds in excess of 1000 miles per hour, but despite all the hard work of our team an unintended anomaly caused it to veer horizontally, ultimately reaching 23,000 ft. Despite this, we are proud of what we were able to achieve with the project. We have investigated the potential root causes of last year’s anomaly and are implementing corrective actions this year to avoid repeating the same mistakes. It was wonderful to put our efforts to the test, and we are excited to come back this year and apply the lessons we learned to a brand new rocket!
Thank you so much to everyone who helped make this past year a success. We could never have done it without our sponsors and our team members!
Check out our highlight video from the 2019 competition: