A team of Edinburgh students recorded a successful and ground-breaking rocket launch during a competition in Portugal this month.
Endeavour, a team made up of students at the University of Edinburgh, travelled to take part in the European Rocketry Challenge in Ponte de Sor where their Darwin III rocket reached an altitude of 7000m.
The impressive rocket was also travelling at 1.7 times the speed of sound and carrying a full suite of student-designed and coded PCBs for date acquisition, telemetry, power distribution and GPS tracking.
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The vehicle also flew higher and faster than any rocket ever designed by a Scottish team, as they shared stunning photos of the launch and the build-up to the huge event.
The team also work closely with companies such as Skyrora, who recently shared footage of their fire engine test as they moved towards the first ever Scottish launch in 2023.
Endeavour say that despite suffering a recovery anomaly, the data that was extracted confirms the maximum altitude reached was 6935m and that based on barometric data, Darwin III over-performed in terms of velocity, exceeding the simulated maximum speed and therefore becoming the fastest vehicle ever designed and constructed in Scotland.
Sadly, the rocket did not deploy its parachute and 80 per cent was "disintegrated" upon impact into the Portuguese soil. Although enough data could be extracted to analyse the vehicle's journey into the atmosphere.
Alberto Progida, Technical Lead for Darwin III Program, commented: "It is hard to convey the deep joy and sense of accomplishment that comes from hearing the chest-shaking crackle generated by an assembly of hundreds of student-designed components cross the sound barrier.
"The amount of detailed engineering work that has gone into everything from the manufacturing methods, the choice of engineering materials, the fundraising, the logistics of shipping a vehicle across Europe and the scientific research to characterise our muon detector has paid off, giving us a spectacular lift-off.
"As a freshly graduated Mechanical Engineering, I cannot overstate how important opportunities such as EuRoC and university societies such as endeavour are for the student experience and preparing young engineers and scientists for industry.
I would like to thank the University of Edinburgh for believing in the team’s mission and delivering us massive financial, technical, and logistical support. Our industrial partners, especially MCarbo, ZOT, Dassault Systemes, nTopology and EasyComposites have been crucial in affording us access with cutting edge materials and processes. Most of all, I want to thank my team for sacrificing weeks and months of their free time to this crazy project, and for enthusiastically taking on the impossible."
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