Neighbor News
Oswego East High School Rocketry Team Ends Their Season With A Bang
Students work to solve engineering problems by designing and constructing model rockets.
On Sunday, April 3rd, 2022 the local Oswego East High school rocketry team had their official launches for The American Rocketry Challenge (TARC).
TARC is the world’s largest rocketry contest with nearly 5,000 students nationwide. Students work to solve engineering problems by designing and constructing model rockets.
This year’s challenge involved fabricating a rocket that reaches an exact height of 800 ft and then returns to the ground with a total flight time of forty seconds. The rocket also had to carry two eggs for its flight with neither of them breaking.
The students Deepesh Balwani, Matthew Clark, Jensen Coonradt, Shalin Joshi, Zayd Khan, Sergio Perez, Dhairya Trivedi, and Lakshya Sinha all worked for months designing, building, and testing their rocket. They used software called Space CAD to design their rocket. This software allowed them to calculate the flight time and altitude of different design ideas with different engines.
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After determining the effectiveness of their design ideas through Space CAD, the team began fabricating and constructing their rocket. They used 3D printing to create many of their parts. Members of the team worked to create CAD (computer-aided design) models of parts like fins and an electronic braking system that were then printed out to create the rocket. After gathering all the required parts, the team worked together to construct their rocket.
Through months of preparation, the team was ready for their official launches.
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Unfortunately, disaster struck. On their first launch, their rocket’s parachute separated from half of the rocket body causing that part to fall to the ground. On the second launch, the wind caused the rocket to veer toward the spectators and charge toward the ground, students were happy to find that one of the eggs survived the crash landing.
Despite their rockets not working as planned, the students were happy with how much they learned along the way. This hands-on experience in rocketry allowed the team to learn more about the world of rocketry and even convinced members to pursue aeronautical engineering after high school.
