Engineering students spent seven years working on the project with lift-off occurring at 5:34 a.m. E.T. from an isolated launch site in the Mistissini region of northern Quebec.Space Concordia/Supplied
For the first time this century, a rocket built and launched in Canada has reached for outer space – an attempt made not by a private company or government agency, but by a group of engineering students at Concordia University in Montreal who spent seven years turning their homegrown dreams of spaceflight into reality.
The rocket, dubbed Starsailor, lifted off on Friday at 5:34 a.m. E.T. from an isolated launch site in the Mistissini region of northern Quebec.
In a live stream of the event, the rocket could be seen as a ball of white light rising rapidly into a clear, early morning sky. Previous close-ups showed the 13 metre-long cylinder attached to its support tower, which was tilted slightly from vertical in order to send the rocket on a long arcing suborbital flight.
Approximately eight minutes later, students said on the live stream that it appeared from telemetry that the nose cone of the rocket had separated earlier than expected, around the time that the Starsailor was expected to have experienced maximum dynamic pressure during flight. If so, the rocket is unlikely to have reached the 100 kilometres altitude that is generally considered to mark the beginning space.
“Everyone is still pretty darn happy,” said Hannah Jack Halcro, an alumna and former president of Space Concordia, who provided commentary for the live stream.
Ms. Halcro added that the nosecone apparently survived the brief, high speed journey. Once recovered it can provide data that will allow the Concordia team to reconstruct precisely what happened during flight.
Starsailor marks the first attempted space launch in Canada since 1998 and the first ever in Quebec. It is also the first student-led space launch to receive approval from Transport Canada.
Worldwide, only a handful of student rockets have ever succeeded at reaching space. Starsailor was aiming to become the first to do so using a liquid fuel engine, the same method by which commercial launch companies such as Space X regularly loft satellites into orbit.
And while the project’s ultimate goal was not achieved during its first attempt, the fact that a student club managed to get so far in a country that long ago surrendered its capacity to access space independently is a paradigm shift.
“It’s a huge deal,” said Charles Kiyanda, an associate professor of engineering at Concordia. “I hope that people are watching this and realizing that it is doable.”