Soaring achievement: Knoxville rocketry team places fourth in international contest
A piece of Knoxville soared high above the Paris Air Show at the Paris-Le Bourget Airport on June 23 as Hardin Valley Academy Team 1, better known as the AeroHawks, capped off their first year of competition with a fourth-place finish at the International Rocketry Challenge in France.
The competition challenges middle and high school students to build rockets within a careful set of parameters, hoping to inspire them toward STEM career fields. This year, the competition required students to design and launch rockets capable of carrying a raw chicken egg 850 feet in the air and returning it to earth in 42 to 45 seconds without cracking it.
The team from the U.K. placed first, followed by teams from France and Japan.
How did the AeroHawks get to Paris?
On May 20, the Hardin Valley team of seven students and their coach, student rocketry veteran Tim Smyrl, stunned the community when they won first place and $20,000 at the American Rocketry Challenge, the world's largest rocketry competition.
The AeroHawks include team captain Zaen Grissino-Mayer, 16; Halley “Mickey” Dandena, 17; Henry Harvey, 16; Bailey Mounts, 16; Caleb Mulder, 16; Khalil Ortiz, 16; and Otilia Scolnic, 16.
To win the national competition held each year in The Plains, Virginia, the AeroHawks had to beat 797 teams from 45 states. And before they could get to Virginia, they had to finish in the top 100 teams in the nation, chasing a perfect score of zero for achieving the right height, flight duration and egg protection requirements.
Along the way, they faced obstacles both figurative and literal, as they fished their rocket out of a tree and worked through a failed ignition on the day of the national competition. Eventually, however, they became national champions and won an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris.
"This is something that happens to other people," Dandena, who heads to the University of Tennessee this fall, told The Tennessean earlier this month. "It felt like something out of a fairytale."
Rocketry community celebrates the home team
The international competition in Paris is the culmination of five national rocketry challenges held around the world.
The American Rocketry Challenge is sponsored by the Aerospace Industries Association and the National Association of Rocketry. In a press release, Eric Fanning, president and CEO of AIA, congratulated the AeroHawks.
“I am deeply proud of the Hardin Valley Academy team for representing our nation and solidifying their place as elite contenders. Through this remarkable journey, they honed their engineering skills, tested their limits, and discovered the true meaning of teamwork on the global stage," Fanning said in the release.
In March, the AIA signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA to further expand rocketry opportunities to underserved students as a gateway into careers in STEM.
More information on the AeroHawks' performance and on how the American Rocketry Challenge brings 5,000 students together each year can be found at rocketcontest.org.
Daniel Dassow is a reporting intern focusing on trending and business news. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com.
Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knoxville students place fourth in International Rocketry Challenge
