AE at Illinois Team Places Second in Rocket Competition

Congratulations to Team Rough Riders, a group of AE at Illinois students, for their second-place finish in the recent 2012 regional Collegiate Rocket Competition!

Rough Riders and two other AE at Illinois student teams designed and built rockets then tested them against the best from five other Midwestern colleges and universities during the competition held in April at the Bong State Recreation Area in Kansasville, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium sponsored the competition.

Leading Rough Riders was Akshita Kakarlapudi, and her team members were Kyle Pieper, Elliot Schwartz and Matt Schonert. Their rocket, the RR-217, hit an apogee of 2,811 feet, transmitted approximately 8 seconds of live video, and was retrieved in a flyable condition.

Competition scoring was based on design presentation, design reporting, the flight, the flight performance evaluation and the teams’ efforts in educational outreach. The flight competition was judged based on the success of the rockets’ flights and the length of good video each team was able to produce during the ascent with an apogee nearest 3,000 feet.

Also from Illinois were the Illinois Space Society (ISS) Tech Team, with team leader Jason Allen and members Erik Lopez, Rishi Bajekal and William Bader; and Team 2, with team leader Jason Morich and members Aliya Burkit, Robyn Macdonald, Raghav Kochhar, and Heath Reising.