It gives us great pleasure to announce the winners of this year’s National Rocketry Championships.
This year’s competition was a bit different due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Normally teams have to design, build and launch a rocket, however, due to the closure of rocketry launch site across the UK and students returning to their homes across the world, this was no longer possible.
Instead, teams had to take to a deep dive into their design process. We judged their designs based on:
- Innovation
- Simulation data
- Communication of design
- OpenRocket altitude
- Design justifications
It was a close call with only 2.7 points separating the top three teams but in the end there can only be one winner which was:
Cranfield Space Agency from Cranfield University.
Their rocket “Message in a bottle” reached a theoretical altitude of 1121m on a 2-grain Cessaroni G126 ‘White Thunder’ motor. Interesting features of their rocket were its 3D printed fin-can and nose cone with an integrated payload of a raspberry pi zero and camera plus a bottle with handwritten messages in it, hence their rocket name, this also acted as ballast to shift their centre of gravity forward. We really loved this touch of ingenuity and fun in their design.
Special mentions
Second place goes to Space:Exe from University of Exeter
Third place goes to Loughborough Space Society from Loughborough University
A big congratulation to these teams but also to everyone else who entered the competition. Our judges said it was really amazing to review all your designs and see all the awesome work you put in.
We hope that next year teams will be able to launch again, do you want to join in? Check out this year’s championships
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