When the novel coronavirus pandemic descended last March, students at Concordia University at first couldn’t access the rocket they had been diligently working on for two years.
The post-secondary institution had to be shut down for safety reasons. So the team – which had already overcome numerous problems with funding and logistics since 2018 – instead decided to move operations into a Sherbrooke -area house. Several team members got tested for COVID-19, came back negative, and then moved there together – allowing them to continue their work.
“We decided to move in together over the summer, and then lived in a house where we just worked on the rocket, 24-7, just building a rocket in the backyard,” rocketry lead Oleg Khalimonov told SpaceQ. “It’s kind of been like that for the past year and a half.”
The extra effort paid off, because Space Concordia announced this month they completed a “hot fire” test of the engine type that they hope will push their rocket to 100 km in altitude later this year. They are about to apply for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch from Spaceport America in New Mexico by December.
A five-minute video of the hot fire, exclusively provided to SpaceQ and not yet ready for public viewing, shows the rocket engine successfully executing thrust, as part of the long process to getting the rocket certified for spaceflight. Space Concordia says the engine produced more than 37 Kilonewtons of thrust, which the team says more than doubled a previous student record.
There are still numerous obstacles after that, not least of which is hoping that quarantine protocols ease for cross-border travel, but Khalimonov says the team is still well in competition for the HeroX Base 11 Space Challenge, which will give $1 million USD (roughly $1.2 million Canadian) for the first student-led team to design, build and launch a liquid-fueled rocket to space.
Space Concordia has been trying to keep its progress under wraps, much like a company in “stealth mode”, out of recognition that universities in the United States tend to be better funded and able to pivot when news arises of a competitor’s progress, Khalimonov said in an interview.
“We’re not the best-funded university on the planet,” he said, but even at that, Concordia University and friends and family have chipped in at least $30,000 Canadian for the team’s progress – and he said the team is grateful for the support.
The engine, the rocket tower and all the parts of the rocket itself have come through calling up various sponsors and asking for donations, which has amounted to an additional $500,000 of hardware available to the students to work on, Khalimonov said. Luckily, he joked, he and his fellow students work for free – so labour costs are not an issue.
The team hopes to add on to the basic competition requirements by launching a 360-degree camera with a fisheye lens, allowing for footage showing the rocket riding to the Kármán line, the internationally accepted boundary of space.
Space Concordia has more than a decade of experience working in space projects, however, first by successfully completing the Consat-1 CubeSat for the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge. (The CubeSat got first prize, but was grounded due to funding issues, the team says.) From that small team of 10 students there is now a group of more than 100 people working in four divisions to design and build space projects, including this rocket.
Khalimonov added that the rocketry community was both supportive and surprised when Space Concordia announced its progress recently on social media. “We posted pictures of our test and they were floored by it,” he said. “They were like, ‘Wow this is one of the beefiest test sets I’ve ever seen out of the university; this is crazy, I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ “
With more iterations already under way, Khalimonov said he remains optimistic about his team’s progress. “We’re really excited,” he said, repeating after a pause, “We’re really excited – for sure.”