{"id":74961,"date":"2025-08-16T21:37:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T21:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/74961\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T21:37:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T21:37:13","slug":"concordia-university-students-launch-rocket-from-northern-quebec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/74961\/","title":{"rendered":"Concordia University students launch rocket from northern Quebec"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students at Concordia University in Montreal have pulled off what they\u2019re calling the first attempted space launch in Canada this century.<\/p>\n

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They launched a rocket from a remote site in northern Quebec early Friday morning, , the culmination of a project seven years in the making.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to prove that students can also do hard things,\u201d said Simon Randy, president of student group Space Concordia. \u201cIt\u2019s not just companies or large government organizations. It\u2019s really people who have the drive and the grit to work on these large projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starsailor, a 13-metre liquid-fuel rocket, took off just after 5:30 a.m., though the launch didn\u2019t go exactly as planned. Randy said the rocket split into pieces shortly after taking off and did not reach space. The goal had been to launch the rocket into space and have it fall back to Earth with a parachute, where the students could recover it.<\/p>\n

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Still, Randy called the project a success. \u201cWe cleared the launch tower. We had stable flight, our telemetry worked normally,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so for us, we\u2019ve learned a huge amount with this mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Randy said the mission was the first attempted space launch from Canadian soil in more than 25 years, and the Starsailor is the largest student-built rocket ever to fly.<\/p>\n

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He said the experience was an opportunity to \u201cshow the world that space can be exciting still, even in a country where we\u2019re maybe not focused on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes Canada should be more interested in having its own rocket launch capability.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a world where there may be more and more tensions between countries, you would probably want to be able to be independent as much as possible in as large a variety of technology as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The project was born in 2018 as part of a U.S.-based competition that offered US$1 million for a student-led university team that launched a liquid-fuel rocket into space. The challenge was derailed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Space Concordia persevered.<\/p>\n

Randy, who chose to attend Concordia three years ago specifically to join the rocketry club, said he\u2019s spent more time on the Starsailor than he has in school. \u201cIt\u2019s like your entire existence is devoted to this project,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The team is now hoping to retrieve some of the debris from the rocket before heading back to Montreal.<\/p>\n

The launch took place about 250 kilometres north of the Cree community of Mistissini.<\/p>\n

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Randy said team members did outreach with local youth to get them excited about space. Some community members also visited the launch site, he said.<\/p>\n

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The university says more than 700 Concordia students have contributed to the Starsailor program since it began seven years ago.<\/p>\n

Now that it\u2019s all over, Randy said, the students are a bit dazed, and are trying to work out what they\u2019re going to do next.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like every day you come \u2026 the rocket is there. It\u2019s kind of like a person in the room. There\u2019s always someone working on it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 15, 2025.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students at Concordia University in Montreal have pulled off what they\u2019re calling the first attempted space launch in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,11290,549,6705,66,306,64],"class_list":["post-74961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-concordia-university","tag-education","tag-rockets","tag-science","tag-space","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}