The university project seeks to break records with a 17 kilo prototype capable of reaching 2,800 km/h
VALENCIA, May 3. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Faraday Rocketry UPV team, integrated into the Spontaneous Generation program of the Universitat Politècnica de València, has presented ‘Origin’, the rocket with which they intend to exceed ten kilometers of vertical flight. A project that, they trust, is the “beginning of the journey to space.”
With a fuselage three meters high and 17 kilos, mainly composed of fiberglass and a double layer connected by aluminum, the university project has ensured that the rocket is prepared for a “perfectly safe and successful” flight.
This was stated this Friday at the presentation of ‘Origin’, Faraday’s fourth “great project” after ‘Aspera’, ‘Astra’ and ‘Genesis’, the rocket with which the UPV students won the award for best flight of Euroc 2023 -the European rocket launching championship.
With this prototype, Faraday – made up of 56 students from different academic disciplines – aims to overcome the barrier of ten kilometers of vertical flight and establish a new height record for rockets manufactured by students, which is currently seven kilometers.
To this end, they have designed the “largest and most powerful” prototype in the history of the university project with more than 2,000 horsepower that will make the rocket reach 2,800 km/h, which is equivalent to traveling the distance between Valencia and Madrid in ” just seven minutes.”
The students of this UPV project have worked “very hard” for eight months to present a rocket that has created “modular and reusable” avionics from scratch, while incorporating ejectable elements that will make it possible to recover the entire fuselage using parachutes.
In this sense, the teams involved in the design of ‘Origin’ have carried out tests in the UPV wind tunnels to be “prepared for critical descent speeds.” In anticipation of these scenarios, they have incorporated a rocket recovery system that includes a float so that the warhead “does not get lost in the middle of the Atlantic.”
Despite this, the creators have highlighted the “simplicity” of the prototype to reduce the complexity of the systems, thus shortening development and testing times and economic costs.
‘Origin’ is the “beginning of the trip to space”, since Faraday have also announced that they are working on ‘Karman’, a series of rockets with which UPV students seek to become the second university in the world to reach space with a vertical flight up to 120 km high.
An “ambitious” project with which they intend to compete with the United States to demonstrate that “we have plenty of resources and talent to compete. Europe has a lot to say in the aerospace industry and the UPV as well,” the Faraday team said during the presentation.