Students make homemade rockets, break many world records

A group of US students has broken a series of world records by launching their homemade rockets farther and faster than any other amateur rocket...

Homemade rocket Aftershock II reaches an altitude of 143,300m above ground - Photo: USC Viterbi School of Engineering

According to LiveScience on November 22, students at the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (RPL) of the University of Southern California (USC) in the US have created the Aftershock II rocket that can reach an altitude of 143,300m above the ground and at "supersonic" speeds.

Aftershock II flew 27,400 meters higher than the previous record, which was set by a Chinese amateur rocket launched 20 years ago. The team launched Aftershock II on October 20 from a site in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The rocket is about 4 meters tall and weighs about 150 kilograms.

RPL said Aftershock II broke the sound barrier just two seconds after liftoff and reached its maximum speed 19 seconds later. The rocket's engine then burned out but the rest of the vehicle continued to rise due to reduced air resistance, allowing it to leave the Earth's atmosphere just 85 seconds after launch and reach its highest altitude 92 seconds later.

At that point, the rocket's nosecone separated from the rest of the vehicle, deployed a parachute to re-enter the atmosphere, and landed safely in the desert. RPL has collected the Aftershock II rocket's nosecone for further flight analysis.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piX4VbWdADc[/embed]

USC students' test launch of homemade rocket Aftershock II - Source: YouTube/USCViterbi

By reaching an altitude of 143,300 meters above the ground, Aftershock II flew “further into space than any non-governmental, non-commercial rocket has ever flown before,” according to a USC representative. The previous record was 115,800 meters, which belonged to the GoFast rocket built by the China Civilian Space Exploration Team and launched in 2004.

During flight, Aftershock II reached a top speed of about 5,800km/h, or Mach 5.5 - 5.5 times the speed of sound - and was slightly faster than GoFast.

The record-breaking launch is the latest success for RPL. In 2019, another group of students became the first to send a rocket across the Karman line, the imaginary boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space. Aftershock II is the second RPL student-built rocket to reach this milestone.

The group of students who created Aftershock II - Photo: USC Viterbi School of Engineering

To set the new records above, the student group covered Aftershock II with a new heat-resistant paint, coated the wings with titanium, changed the materials of some parts of the rocket...

RPL researchers were impressed with the students' Aftershock II "product" given how little help they received from their teachers.

“This is a testament to the excellence we seek to develop in our emerging aerospace engineers,” said Dan Erwin, dean of the USC Department of Aerospace Engineering.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/sinh-vien-lam-ten-lua-tu-che-pha-nhieu-ky-luc-the-gioi-20241122114047237.htm