Hugo Novais, Inês Morais, Inês Presa, Mariana Cruz and Rômulo Souza, 2nd year students on the Master’s programme in Aerospace Engineering, presented a solid fuel rocket as their final project.

The work was carried out in the second edition of the Launcher Design and Engineering Curricular Unit (CU) and is a follow-up to a project from the inaugural edition of the CU last year, in which a rocket was launched using compressed air and water propulsion.

As in the first edition, the rocket features an electronic telemetry module that measures, collects and transmits navigation data in real time. It also incorporates a parachute again, this time actuated automatically.

With the exception of the engine, which was bought in advance and proved to need replacing, the rocket is in practice ready to be launched. Specifically, it is expected to be launched at PAM Aero 2025, which will take place in July at the Cerval Aerodrome, near Valença.

The lecturers on this course come from two different EEUM departments with complementary expertise in Design and Automation (Eurico Seabra, DEM, coordinator of the course), Applied Thermodynamics and Propulsion (Francisco Brito, DEM) and Structures and BIM (Miguel Azenha and Eduardo Pereira). A special feature of this CU is that it also emphasised launch pads and BIM tools, something original in this type of CU.

Congratulations to everyone involved!