York Aerospace and Rocketry Society Update

Rapita Systems are proud to be sponsoring the University of York Aerospace and Rocketry society, who are creating a rocket to enter one of the largest international rocketry competitions, the Spaceport America Cup. The team at YAR will be using the RVS toolsuite to verify the software onboard their rocket, which Rapita hopes will improve the team’s odds of making the 10,000-foot ascent!

The York Aerospace & Rocketry Society continues to make progress in making their rocket for the international rocketry competition Spaceport America 2022. The competition, which takes place in New Mexico USA typically once per year, was postponed in 2021 due to COVID-19 regulations. This hasn't hindered YAR in their project, however, and they have used the extra time to refine their designs and test some concepts before making the rocket they'll be taking to the SpacePort America competition.

YAR have held test launches of two small scale rockets over the summer. Each launch has allowed the group to collect data that will help them in achieving their desired goal of launching a rocket as close as possible to 10,000 feet next summer.

The successful launches have given the team a big boost in morale after the challenging manufacturing process during lockdown. The team manufactured their rockets while physically apart, with members of the team making components separately and then posting the components to others in the team to continue the manufacturing process. It was also difficult for the team to find rocket components, especially motors, due to export restrictions during lockdowns and after Brexit.

On 5 September, the latest launch saw their rocket “Small Mike” fly to an altitude of 524m with a top speed of 100m/s.

“The launch went really well. Unfortunately, we had a failure with the recovery system but we did manage to get tonnes of flight data, which we are going to analyse and use to guide us for the big rocket.”

Rebecca Wardle - YAR President

You can find out more about the YAR's project on the Rapita blog or on the YAR website.

Did you know that Rapita offers discounted tools for academic and teaching purposes? You can find out more about RVS^Acad on our website.