Cosmic Research of the UPC’s ESEIAAT is the first Spanish team ever selected for the Spaceport America Cup
Tribute to Shannon Lucid
Shannon Lucid is an American biochemist and astronaut who has flown with NASA five times. During her last mission, she lived in space for 188 days, breaking all records. In addition, she was NASA’s chief scientist in the 2000s.
The Cosmic Research student team from the UPC’s ESEIAAT named its stratospheric rocket after her. Entirely built and designed by themselves, the rocket has been admitted to this year’s Spaceport America Cup, the prestigious competition organised by ESRA. The Catalan team will compete against teams from universities such as Embry-Riddle, Princeton, Stanford, California Berkley, Texas and Melbourne.
The ESEIAAT’s Cosmic Research student team has presented LUCID, the rocket that has competed in the Spaceport America Cup in New Mexico, US, in June. It is the first Spanish team to ever participate in this competition, which brings together 1,700 students from universities around the world. The rocket was launched the 20th June.
Jun 20, 2024
Cosmic Research, a team of nine students from the Terrassa School of Industrial, Aerospace and Audiovisual Engineering (ESEIAAT) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - Barcelona Tech (UPC), has made history. Its LUCID stratospheric rocket has been accepted to the Spaceport America Cup in the highest category of 30,000 ft (ca. 9 km). The competition is taking place at Spaceport America, New Mexico, from 17 to 22 June. Never before had a Spanish team been admitted.
Watch the LUCID rocket launch live on YouTube
LUCID has a mass of 40 kg, a height of over 3 m and an outer diameter of 152.4 mm. It can fly at a maximum speed of over 2,000 km/h—twice as fast as a commercial flight—potentially reaching an altitude of 30,000 ft. It is a supersonic, suborbital rocket stabilised by 4 fins and capable of carrying a 4-kg 3U CubeSat payload. For propulsion, it will use a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solid motor. The rocket has a monocoque structure made mostly of carbon fibre, except for the electronics module and the nose cone, which were specially designed for supersonic flight, with an aluminium and fibreglass tip to provide a radiolucent compartment.
The avionics on the rocket were also developed by Cosmic Research. They will send real-time data from the multiple on-board sensors (position, speed and acceleration) to the ground station, also designed by the team. They are an essential component because they also activate the recovery system to help the team find the rocket after it lands using two parachutes (the main one is 3 m in diameter).
The 3U CubeSat-shaped payload carried by LUCID will not be released in flight and will be retrieved after the rocket lands. Cosmic Research offered this space to institutes, universities and research centres for them to conduct experiments in microgravity or hypergravity conditions. The payload will consist of a CubeSat that integrates a gas reading experiment by the Forat Engineering group from the Forat del Vent institute in Cerdanyola del Vallès; a bottle of gin by Outer Gin, a gin conceived to be produced in space; and a 1U CubeSat designed by Cosmic Research that incorporates a camera to capture images of the flight from inside the rocket.
As Alba Badia, Cosmic Research coordinator and a student on the master’s degree in Industrial Engineering at the ESEIAAT, explains, “this mission is another milestone in our career. After successfully completing the Bondar mission, which broke the university record in Spain by reaching an altitude of 7.8 km with the most powerful rocket ever launched in Catalonia, it was now time to set ourselves a challenge that would help us someday reach 100 km. The challenge was to be admitted to the Spaceport America Cup and compete with the best universities in the world to reach higher, and we did it. We are excited that we will launch our rocket from the world’s first commercial rocket launch pad, currently used by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. Just living this experience is already a great success for us.”
Since its founding in 2016, the Cosmic Research association of the UPC’s ESEIAAT has launched 40 rockets and over a hundred CanSat mini-satellites, becoming the most active and prolific university rocket association in the country.
The Cosmic Research rocketeers that will participate in the Spaceport America Cup are coordinator Alba Badia, Abimael Campillo Simón, Antonio Estrela Zolochevsky, Arnau Pena Sapena, Aleix Ribas Torras, Sergi Pena Sapena, Javier Salmerón Rodríguez, Pablo Torres Rubio and Alfred Valentín Bárez.
The world's most important rocket competition
Spaceport America Cup is the world’s largest interuniversity rocket engineering conference and competition, with over 1,700 students participating. Last year, 158 teams (80 from the US and 78 from other countries) were accepted.
Organised by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), the competition has two altitude categories, 10,000 ft (ca. 3 km) and 30,000 ft (ca. 9 km), both involving rockets with COTS solid motors, SRAD solid motors and SRAD hybrid or liquid motors.
Cosmic Research will compete in the highest category of 30,000 ft with a COTS solid motor. Only three of 28 teams in this category are European: the UPC’s ESEIAAT team, the Technical University of Munich and the Politehnica University of Bucharest. The rest are from the United States, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and Thailand.
The venue of the competition is legendary. It is Spaceport America, the first commercial rocket launch base in the world, located between the cities of Las Cruces and Truth or Consequences in the state of New Mexico, which is now used by the company Blue Origin.
Follow the day to day of the Cosmic Research team at the SpacePort America Cup
