“This is insane,”\u00a0said student Shua Kalmanson\u00a0looking up at the cloud of smoke created by the rocket’s separation.<\/p>\n
“Now that was the largest student-built rocket ever flown \u2014 pretty cool,” added Simon Randy, Space Concordia’s president.<\/p>\n
The mission is a collaborative effort between the Space Concordia\u00a0Rocketry Division and members of the local Cree community.<\/p>\n
Mistissini council member Pamela MacLeod\u00a0said when she first heard about the student’s request to launch the rocket in Mistissini, she though it was “strange but interesting.”<\/p>\n
“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,\u00a0our elders,\u00a0to see something like this happen within our territory and be part of that.”<\/p>\n
Friday’s launch was the team’s\u00a0third attempt after the first two launch dates were cancelled due to unfavourable\u00a0meteorological conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The students hoped Starsailor would\u00a0enter space, past the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n line which is at an altitude of 100 kilometres,\u00a0before coming back down. But, the rocket separated earlier than expected, potentially stifling its ascent.<\/p>\n
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 and the rocket’s trajectory data.<\/p>\n
![\"Students](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/starsailor-rocket.JPG\")
The rocket was designed by students from Space Concordia Rocketry Division and manufactured at the university. They then had to transport it to Mistissini, about a nine-hour drive north from Montreal. (Simon Randy\/Space Concordia)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Charles Basenga Kiyanda, another professor who collaborated on the project, said regardless of whether the rocket\u00a0reached space or not, the launch was an undeniable success. He woke up his 10-year-old son at 5 a.m. to witness the feat alongside him.<\/p>\n
“At an experimental stage, this is not a failure. If you get ignition, it’s good. We have information that we can work with and that we can improve,” said\u00a0Basenga Kiyanda<\/p>\n
“When you do rocketry … every little mishap is always extremely impressive.”<\/p>\n
WATCH\u00a0| The moment rocket launches:\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755358092_873_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
See the historic moment this student-built rocket launched from northern Quebec<\/p>\n
Concordia University’s student-led space program initially built the Starsailor rocket for a science competition that was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The takeoff from Cree territory on Aug. 15 was the first space launch on Canadian soil in more than 25 years.<\/p>\n
Hannah Halcro, who’s been involved with the project since its inception seven years ago, told livestream audiences that despite the setback, “everyone is still pretty darn happy.”<\/p>\n
“We haven’t been able to test the structure itself, we can only do simulations and simulations are not reality, so now we know.”<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Originally built for a science competition,\u00a0the rocket was left without a contest after the event was cancelled, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the team,\u00a0made up of over 700 members since 2018, pressed forward with the goal of making history and launching the most powerful student-built rocket, as confirmed by a Transport Canada statement earlier this month.<\/p>\n
![\"3](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/starsailor-students.jpg\")
Over 700 members have contributed to the Starsailor mission since its inception in 2018. (Simon Randy\/Space Concordia)<\/p>\n
It was designed by the students and manufactured by them at Concordia University. They then had to conduct multiple tests on the rocket’s\u00a0individual parts and eventually in full before disassembling it and transporting it to Mistissini,\u00a0which is a nine-hour drive north of Montreal.<\/p>\n
The entire process from start to finish spanned seven years.<\/p>\n
As the sun kept rising, Halcro stepped into the livestream frame to explain exactly what took place, joined by Randy and\u00a0Alice Langlais,\u00a0who translated into French. In the background, a group of people had gathered to celebrate and applaud what they had just achieved.<\/p>\n
“See you in space next time,” said Halcro\u00a0laughing, before turning away from the camera and joining them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students from Concordia University cheered and whistled as the Starsailor rocket lifted off on Cree territory, marking\u00a0the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-87498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}