Engineering Club Successfully Launches 4 Rockets
On Tuesday, Millbrook School’s engineering club students took one small step toward an aerospace championship, successfully blasting four rockets into the sky down by the turf fields. The launch was a test run as the club prepares to enter next year’s American Rocketry Challenge and earn their High Power Rocketry (HPR) Level 1 certification.
Under the expert supervision of club faculty leader Dr. Timothy Kernan, students outfitted their handcrafted spacecraft with rocket engines, mounted them on the launchpad, and took turns blasting them up to 1,000 feet into the sky. The weather was perfect for the launch, and only one of the rockets drifted off course and into a tree as it parachuted back to Earth.
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When the rocketeers head to next year’s competition, they’ll draw on their test launch experience to build a model rocket that must carry raw eggs nearly 800 feet into the sky and return them unbroken to the ground. According to Dr. Kernan, they’ll have to complete this mission with engines that are around 10 times more powerful than the ones they used for the test launch. The team is more than up to the challenge, though.
“We are so excited that all of our test launches were successful, as were most of the recoveries!” Engineering Club member Grace Bellin ’27 wrote on Instagram. “We can’t wait until next year to go use the higher power engines and get our certification.”
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