EPFL Rocket Team wins the Jim Furfaro Award
© EPFL Rocket Team
At the Spaceport America Cup that took place from June 19th to 23th in New Mexico, USA, the EPFL Rocket Team received the Jim Furfaro Award for Technical Excellence for the excellent mastering and understanding of the technologies developed in the rocket.
The Spaceport America Cup gathered 124 university teams, mostly from USA and Canada, for a rocket launching competition. This competition takes place every year in the New Mexico desert.
The EPFL Rock Team, composed of 30 students, designed a 2.7 m high rocket, named Matterhorn, with the objective of launching it to an altitude of 3048 m and recovering it in working state. The rocket carries as payload a muon detector, equipped with its own recovery system, which can estimate its descent speed based upon the muon detection rate. This detector was designed by the Physics Section in collaboration with the High Energy Physics Laboratory.
The launch of the rocket went mostly as planned. However, the ejection of the nose cone carrying the payload happened too early, ripping the detector’s parachute in the process. The detector made a free fall of about 1000 m, but was still operational, meeting the recovery requirements! The rest of the rocket was recovered with a parachute, as planned.
Despite the technical issues during the flight, the jury granted the team with the Jim Furfaro Award for Technical Excellence. This award, attributed to one of the 124 competing teams, honours the excellent mastering and understanding of the technologies developed in the rocket, and the great professionalism in the management of all the rocket operations. The jury particularly appreciated the recovery system of the rocket, which uses a single parachute of variable surface area whereas other teams use two parachutes.
The 2019 edition of the competition is already in preparation, with a rocket named Eiger. We are looking forward to hearing about its progress.