Australian teams soared at Spaceport America Cup
The initial version of this story misstated the name of the nonprofit Experimental Sounding Rocket Association, and has been corrected.
LAS CRUCES ‒ After a three-week delay that arose from technical problems last month, the winners of the Spaceport America Cup rocketry competition were announced last weekend in a livestreamed award ceremony.
New Mexico's Spaceport America, which has hosted the annual contest since 2017, said more than 1,300 participants participated, mainly higher education students and their mentors, from 95 institutions in 16 countries. The competition begins and ends with presentations at the Las Cruces Convention Center, while launches take place over a few days at the spaceport's vertical launch facility in Sierra County.
When the contestants gathered for closing ceremonies in Las Cruces on June 25, they learned that most winners would not be announced that night, because of problems collecting flight data from all of the rocket launches. The judges, volunteers who reside all over the United States, ultimately took three weeks to process the data and score the teams accurately.
In all, 14 prizes were awarded in addition to three cash prizes from Space Dynamics Laboratory research payloads flown by teams from the University of Queensland, West Virginia University and University of Sydney.
Once the winners were announced, it was clear that 2022 — the first Spaceport America Cup competition to happen in person since 2019, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic — was a big year for Australian teams.
The competition's overall prize, the Cup itself, went to the University of Sydney, whose team launched a rocket named Bluewren to 30,000 feet with a research payload designed to assist in collecting space debris.
Sydney also took first place in SDL's payload competition and achieved the top score for 30,000-foot flights by commercial "off the shelf" rockets, while three other Australian teams won prizes as well: The University of Queensland took third place in the payload competition, while the Charles Hoult Award for Modeling and Simulation was taken by the University of Melbourne, with Monash University's team as runner-up.
More: Spaceport America Cup rocketry competition weathers rain and mud
The Chile Cup, an award for teams based in New Mexico or Texas, was won for the first time by New Mexico State University's Atomic Aggies, who prevailed over teams from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech and the University of Texas at El Paso.
2022 Spaceport America Cup winners
Sportsmanship
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Brigham Young University (runner-up)
Nancy Squires Team Spirit Award
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (runner-up)
Charles Hoult Award for Modeling and Simulation
University of Melbourne, Australia
Monash University, Australia (runner-up)
Dr. Gil Moore Award for Innovation
University of Michigan - Dearborn
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand (runner-up)
Cornell University (runner-up)
University of Leeds, UK (runner-up)
Jim Furfaro Award for Technical Excellence
University of Akron
University of Waterloo, Canada (runner-up)
James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics
Boston University
Brigham Young University (runner-up)
10,000-foot COTS (commercial off-the-shelf)
Case Western Reserve University
The Citadel, South Carolina (runner-up)
10,000-foot SRAD (student researched and designed), solid fuel
Kent State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology (runner-up)
10,000-foot SRAD hybrid/liquid fuel
Polytechnique Montréal, Canada
Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland (runner-up)
30,000-foot COTS
University of Sydney, Australia
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (runner-up)
30,000-foot SRAD solid fuel
West Virginia University
Oregon State University (runner-up)
30,000-foot SRAD hybrid/liquid fuel
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
ETH Zurich, Switzerland (runner-up)
Spaceport America Chile Cup
New Mexico State University
University of New Mexico (runner-up)
Spaceport America Cup (overall winner)
University of Sydney, Australia
Case Western Reserve University (runner-up)
The competition was founded in 2006 by the nonprofit Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), which continues to manage the event in partnership with the spaceport. Among the sponsors are aerospace companies that meet and recruit talent at the competition, including main sponsor Sierra Space, spaceport anchor tenant Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin among others.
In a statement, spaceport director Scott McLaughlin said, "We have seen many rocketeers return to Spaceport America once they have graduated and joined the aerospace workforce."
The competition was canceled in 2020 over pandemic conditions and held as a virtual event last summer.
Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, adammassa@lcsun-news.com or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Las Cruces Sun-News: Australian teams soared at Spaceport America Cup