NASA will announce the winners of this year’s Student Launch rocketry competition in a live virtual awards ceremony Thursday, June 2, beginning at 1 p.m. CDT. Media are invited to attend via the Student Launch Facebook page, as well as the YouTube page for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama.
Student Launch is an annual competition that typically culminates each April with a gathering of teams for a weekend of rocket launches and celebration. This year, teams had the choice of competing April 23 near NASA Marshall or launching from a home field.
Student Launch challenges middle school, high school, college, and university students from across the United States and Puerto Rico to design, build, and test a high-powered amateur rocket, fly it to an altitude between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, and make a successful landing. Teams compete in collegiate or middle school/high school divisions, and are scored in nearly a dozen categories, including altitude, safety, vehicle design, social media presence, and more.
For the 2022 season, college/university teams were tasked with designing a payload capable of autonomously locating where their rocket landed by identifying the rocket’s grid position on an aerial image of the launch site, while transmitting the data back to their ground station. This had to be accomplished without the use of GPS. Middle/high school teams could choose to attempt the college/university division challenge or develop their own science or engineering experiment.
NASA’s Southeast Regional Office of STEM Engagement at NASA Marshall manages Student Launch, one of the agency’s Artemis Student Challenges. These activities stimulate innovation and advance NASA’s human exploration mission through collaboration with educational institutions and students – the Artemis Generation, who will help NASA explore the Moon and Mars.
For more information about Student Launch, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/stem/
For more information about NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges, visit:
