Middle School Rocketry Club Takes Flight

This year, Middle School students had the opportunity to join the new Rocketry Club, led by WIS parent Dr. Elena de la Rosa Blanco. Thanks to a connection from WIS parent Dr. James Hileman, the club was sponsored by the SpaceLab University of Illinois Engineering Department.

Each Thursday after school, the club members (Grade 8 students Pia, Jack, Bianca, Gavin, Stella, Santi, Leo, and Callum) met to learn the physics behind rocketry and to build model rockets. Their end goal was to launch them from NASA Goddard as part of their monthly program that allows visitors to launch model rockets from their Visitor Center!

This past Saturday, the club members were able to launch eight rockets from Goddard; all of them successfully flew! Six of the rockets were Courier rockets powered by C5-3 series engines. Two of those carried altimeters that were measuring the apogee of the rockets. NASA will recover the rockets and altimeters and return them to the team. They also retested one of the rockets with a B4-6 upper stage series engine; it successfully launched and was recovered.

Next up: the club is hoping to compete in the American Rocketry Challenge in 2026.

A big thank you to Elena and Jim for helping our students get this club off the ground and to everyone who supported them! Congrats to the WIS Rocketry Club!