Students from Concordia University cheered and whistled as the Starsailor rocket lifted off on Cree territory, marking the first of its size to be launched by a student team.
At 5:34 a.m. ET, the rocket blasted off in a flash of light, captured in a livestream posted to YouTube, from a base camp about 250 kilometres north of Mistissini, in northern Quebec.
“This is insane,” said student Shua Kalmanson looking up at the cloud of smoke created by the rocket’s separation.
The mission is a collaborative effort between the Space Concordia Rocketry Division and members of the local Cree community.
Mistissini council member Pamela MacLeod said when she first heard about the student’s request to launch the rocket in Mistissini, she though it was “strange but interesting.”
“This is, you know, something very different … never had something like this happen within our territory,” she said. “And at the same time really looking at it as an opportunity for all our community members, our elders, to see something like this happen within our territory and be part of that.”
Friday’s launch was the team’s third attempt after the first two launch dates were cancelled due to unfavourable meteorological conditions.
The students hoped Starsailor would enter space, past the Kármán line which is at an altitude of 100 kilometres. But, the rocket separated earlier than expected, potentially stifling its ascent.
Concordia professor Hoi Dick Ng said the team will only find out whether the rocket actually made it into space once it retrieves and analyzes the debris.
If it travelled far enough, the Starsailor would be the world’s first student-built liquid-fuel rocket to reach space, Canada’s first space launch in over 25 years, and the first to be achieved by a team of students, according to the university.
Daybreak MontrealConcordia’s student built rocket – Starsailor – takes off!
The Starsailor rocket has launched this morning! At 5:34 am, after 7 years the was rocket sent off towards space. The rocket was up there for about 30 seconds before it separated and burned out earlier than anticipated. Twice now, the launch has been cancelled due to weather conditions. Dozens of engineering students and alumni from Concordia University have been camping in the boreal forest. They are near a Cree trapline, some 250 kilometers north of Mistissini. Oleg Khalimonov is the program lead of the project and spoke to us on Daybreak.
Hannah Halcro, who’s been involved with the project since its inception seven years ago, told livestream audiences that despite the setback, “everyone is pretty darn happy.”
“We haven’t been able to test the structure itself, we can only do simulations and simulations are not reality, so now we know.”
Over the next couple of days, the recovery team will be working on finding and recovering the rocket with the help of local helicopter pilots.
Originally built for a science competition, the rocket was left without a contest after the event was cancelled, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the team, made up of 700 members, pressed forward with the goal of making history and launching the biggest student-built rocket.
“See you in space next time,” said Halcro, before turning away from the camera and joining a group of people celebrating in the background.