Awesome pictures taken from more than 80,000 feet above the earth

We are in awe of these beautiful pictures taken by the Triton Rocket Club's space balloon at more than 80,000 feet above the earth.
The balloon is the club's testing platform for the electronics they plan to mount on a rocket hey will be launching in spring 2015. Their goal? To make UC San Diego the first university to launch a rocket in space.
In case you're wondering, you can see the Salton Sea in some of the pictures, as well as the Pacific Ocean.

Triton Rocket Club wins second place in national competition

Update Nov 10: a related story ran in the San Diego newspaper, UT San Diego under the headline: "UCSD aims to send rocket into space"

Congratulations to the Triton Rocket Club, which placed second in this year's University Student Rocketry Challenge! It's all the more impressive that this was the club's first time in the contest.
The goal was to fly a common payload consisting of electronic measuring devices weighting 3 lbs. to 10000 feet above ground level. Teams sent design and manufacturing reports pre-flight as well as post flight analysis and reports over eight months.

The UC San Diego team actually built its own motor and static-fired it on July 19. "We wanted to stand out and be creative with our design," said Nicholas Montoya, the club's president. The team's rocket was made from a sleek, all black carbon fiber body with a fiberglass nose-cone. They launched it Oct. 4 at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry site in the Mojave Desert. The rocket reached a maximum velocity of 835 mph--or Mach 1.09--and a maximum altitude of 15,541 feet above sea level--about three miles high.

Next up: a launch in Spring 2015, with the goal of reaching space, roughly 62 miles in attitude.
The Triton Rocket Club is sponsored by NASA through the California Space Grant Consortium and by SPAWAR and Northrop Grumman Aerospace. The rocketry challenge is hosted by the national organization Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

More about the Triton Rocket Club here: http://tritonrocket.ucsd.edu/

More pictures of the fun, as well as of the rocket's flight trajectory below.

Rocket club helps Escondido students gear up for college

"Three, two, one!" Students from Mission Middle School in Escondido counted down as one of them pressed a button that ignited a rocket engine securely fastened to a table on Warren Mall. It was all part of an event set up by Palomar College's Gear Up program. The program designed to create a college-going culture in schools in North San Diego County.

More than 180 middle school students fanned across the UC San Diego campus Tuesday Jan. 14. One of the stops on their itinerary was a demonstration by the Triton Rocket Club, whose members are mostly engineering students. "Rocket science, blowing things up: students are doing this for a living," said Nico Montoya, an IDEA scholar and president of the Triton Rocket Club."It's an actual career." Montoya speaks from experience. He has interned at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and currently works on UAVs at Northrop Grumman.

On a very sunny morning, he showed students how to wire a rocket engine and explained the chemical reactions involved. A few lucky students got to use the remote that actually starts up the engine. Elizabeth Flor, 13, was one of them. She let out a jubilant "I did it!" after pressing the button and seeing flames shoot out of the engine's exhaust.

"It was exciting," she said. "I'd never done it. It's an intense feeling."

Elizabeth wants to become a lawyer and fight for women's rights. Her parents didn't go to college, but if all goes well, she will be the fifth sibling in her family to go on to higher education after she graduates high school.

Elizabeth visited the UCLA campus before coming to UC San Diego. But for a lot of her classmates, it was the first trip outside of Escondido, said Abby Algarin, Gear Up outreach coordinator at Mission Middle School. She worked with the Raza graduate student association on campus to make sure that students got to hear from graduate students and faculty with similar backgrounds.

Students visibly connected with the speakers who shared some of their experiences, said Suzan Varga, a Mission Middle School teacher and one of the chaperones on the trip.
"What I feel as a teacher is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "It was powerful."

UPDATED: Rocket Club Blasts Off

About 100 people turned out on RIMAC field at 8:30 a.m. this Saturday Dec. 7 to watch the Triton Rocket Club, a pre-professional student organization, run static fire tests of seven student-designed rocket engines.
Of those, 50 were club members who were there with their rocket engines.
Six teams with colorful names such as the Ultimizer and the Imperfectionists, were made up of new members or freshmen. Another team consists of returning students. That team used Ammonium percholarate composite propellant, also known as APCP--the same fuel used in space shuttle boosters. Their goal is to be the first university to reach space with a rocket for which every single component is designed by students. During the static fire tests, that engine produced almost 240 lbs of thrust.
The Triton Rocket Club, founded in fall quarter 2011 at UC San Diego, aims to help students interested in rocketry get practical and technical experience. Another goal is to help students get internships.
Learn more about the club here: http://tritonrocket.ucsd.edu/
Here's a short video recapping Saturday's tests:

Here's a fun video recapping their activities during the 2012-13 academic year: