Rocketry Team's NASA Mission

For the second year in a row, the Upper School Rocketry Team spent a year working on this national challenge, earning the privilege of launching a rocket and payload of their own design at the NASA Student Launch event and competition in Huntsville, Alabama this spring. 

The NASA Student Launch Initiative (SLI) is a college-level engineering challenge open to college teams and select high schools. The US team earned an invitation from their American Rocketry Challenge (ARC) performance in 2023 by placing 15th in the nation out of 850 teams.

The Rocketry Team spent the year designing the rocket and its scientific payload and experiment, and building and readying it for launch. This competition is guided and assessed by NASA engineers along the way. After a minor hiccup on their final test flight at home, in which coach Jim Seibyl ’83 and team quickly diagnosed and presented the evidence of to NASA engineers, the team was cleared to launch! Less than half the teams in the high school division passed all the milestones to be cleared for launch. The Rocketry Team, who call themselves the US Space Program, traveled with high hopes down to Huntsville at the end of April. 

In addition to the chance to launch their rocket over a mile into the sky, there was a conference event that brought all the teams together from across the country. This was a chance for the team to show off their work, meet with other teams, and take a look at the other 100 or so rockets. They could visit corporate (e.g. Northrup Grumman) and NASA booths to pick up paperwork for internships, pick the brains of the experts, and ask questions ranging from employment opportunities to actual missions with the engineers doing the work. The team also connected with Milo Slye '24 of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Team who worked on the payload of the rocket in the 2024 NASA competition. 

The launch day, the pinnacle event of SLI where all 60 teams fly their rocket in three volleys of 20 was originally pushed back from Saturday to Sunday due to rain and thunderstorms going through the Huntsville area, so the team anxiously awaited the weather reports for the following day. The reports looked promising as they packed up the rocket and headed out to Bragg Farms about 20 miles north of Huntsville. The anticipation was electric as the team began prepping the rocket and preparing for launch. 

The first volley was scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. but was delayed as the low cloud ceiling had prevented launches and the time began to slip as NASA tried to launch in any patch of blue sky they could to keep moving it along as best they could without compromising on safety.  The hours seemed to slip away as the first volley concluded after noon and the second volley was allowed to put rockets on the pad. The US rocket had gone through its final checks and the altimeters and experiments were live and it was ready to fly!! 

But Mother Nature had other plans. Clouds continued to hang over the field and the clock ran out for the team. As much as we wanted to stay and see if we could fly, it became obvious that that was no longer possible as the final decision point was reached and we had to pull the rocket from the pad and pack it up to come home for AP exams.

Disappointed, the students learned that even after all the work, the planning, the follow up and cross-checking of every detail, sometimes a mission is scrubbed for reasons beyond their control, in this case the weather. It became an opportunity for them to show grace under disappointing circumstances which they all exhibited with dignity and resolve to fly the rocket. Under these circumstances, NASA allows student teams to fly at home in order to finish the mission and final reporting.