Triton rocket club sets new record for altitude in flight

The Triton Rocket Club (TRC) at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering set a record this past weekend when they sent their Astraeus rocket soaring 28,000 feet into the desert sky.

The flight sets the record for the highest rocket every flown by UC San Diego students. Besides being reaching a record height, this rocket was the biggest, heaviest, fastest, most powerful for TRC. 

"This design serves as the proof-of-concept for our 10” diameter space rocket, and officially marks the beginning of the home stretch for our launch to space in Spring 2017," said Nico Montoya, a graduating senior and member of the club. "The next step is to fly an 8" diameter rocket to 100,000+ feet which will set the record for highest one-stage college rocket!"

Check out the video, and keep scrolling for more photos!

Video Credit: Austin Torgerson

TRC wasn't the only group out firing rockets over the weekend. The MAE 155B Aerospace Senior Design class successfully static fired the Atlas missile LR-101 engine seen here:

Stay tuned for another test on June 4!

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.

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: