Design. Build. Launch. 

The Oak Park High School Rocketry and Aviation Club competed in The American Rocketry Challenge of 2019, the world’s largest rocket contest, placing 21st out of 900 teams.

The top 25 teams qualify to compete in the NASA Student Launch initiative where their high-power rockets will be launched into the air of Huntsville, Alabama at NASA’s historic Marshall Space Flight Center this upcoming spring. The competition separates teams into college/university and middle/high school divisions. 

“We received the opportunity to submit a proposal by being in the top 25 teams,” junior and club member Haniah Hamza wrote to the Talon. “It is either accepted or rejected.”

A design proposal was due to the NASA Student Launch project office by Sept. 18. Acceptance would allow them to begin designing, building and eventually be able to launch on April 4, 2020.

“We’re calling it Project Theia,” Hamza wrote.

Students from the club were informed their proposal, named after the Titan goddess of light and vision, was accepted as of Oct. 3.

“We have to design a rocket with a science or engineering experiment which is a lot more work than I’ve ever done before,” Hamza wrote. “The parameters and instructions for the project are on a 50-page long PDF on NASA’s website.”

According to Superintendent and club adviser Dr. Tony Knight, the proposal acceptance gives them much to work toward and work on.

“NASA has a teleconference that we have to participate [in, which] outlines the next stage,” Knight said. “If it all goes well, you have to build a half-scale of your design first [and] test it. Then you need to build a full-scale rocket and test it. If [we] make it through all the processes, we’ll go to Huntsville.”

According to junior and team captain Forest Siewert, each team will be scored at the competition based on altitude and payload performance.

Their design plans include a miniature satellite acting as their payload; this device, known as the CubeSat, is commonly used in space research. 

“[It] will live stream a video of the flight and also send back data from the flight,” Siewert said.

Knight believes the opportunity to work with NASA is a very real engineering challenge.

“When you get invited to do [competition run by] NASA, it’s a really wonderful learning experience for the students,” Knight said.

Hamza expressed the utmost confidence in their fellow members and their proposal.

“To be completely honest, I’m not very nervous for our team,” Hamza wrote. “Call me arrogant, but I believe that we’ll get to dazzle NASA with our rocket.”