I Promise School students make their mark on Akronaut rocket launching at Spaceport event

On Thursday in the New Mexico desert between Las Cruses and Truth or Consequences, a group of University of Akron students will loft a 22-foot rocket into the open sky.

A livestream of of the event is at https://bit.ly/3NkRZkJ.

If all goes as hoped, the two-stage, solid-fuel rocket will climb to Mount Everest heights, striving for the upper limits of the Earth’s troposphere.

It’s a mission delayed two years by the COVID-19 pandemic, one that will carry the hand prints of about 40 5th-graders from the I Promise School in Akron.

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This week's Spaceport America Cup is billed as the world’s largest intercollegiate rocketry engineering contest, bringing together 5,257 undergraduate student teams from across the U.S. and 63 international teams from around the world.

A caravan of about 50 UA students — members of the Akronauts — left Saturday for New Mexico, boarding four vans, an SUV and a truck hauling the team’s rocket to the desert sands 1,700 miles away.

The student design group was formed in 2014, combining a fascination with rocketry and a love of design. They are developing a liquid fuel rocket and hope to launch one that will reach the edge of space in a couple of years, said Riley Myers, the team’s outreach lead and incoming president.

The Spaceport competition and student I Promise School sessions with students merge Myers’ dual passions of engineering and STEM outreach.

Along with team member Josh Newell and other Akronauts, the group brought their love of rocketry to six 5th-grade classes — about 110 students — at the school earlier this year, igniting interest among the students.

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“They really didn’t know a whole lot about space,” Myers said Thursday at UA rocket propulsion building near the UA Engineering Research Center on Wolf Ledges Parkway in Akron. “You spend a day there and they want to become an astronaut.”

The Akronauts helped students create air-propelled paper rockets to demonstrate design concepts, working on paper projectiles that would exceed a 20-foot flight.

“Once the rockets start launching, their faces really light up,” Myers, from Diamond in Portage County, said.

Newell, a student from Magnolia in Stark County, said the exercise won over young skeptics at the school, many who became converted to the wonders of space and the rockets that go there.

“They said, ‘Oh my [gosh] that’s so cool. How do we make it go farther?’ ” he said.

Student handprints were added on May 13 to the exterior of the rocket, which also features a school logo.

Ambitious Akronauts

The I Promise Rocket isn’t the only one built by the Akronauts. As part of its Emergence Series, the team is hoping to design a rocket that will reach the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, the Kármán line, about 62 miles up. Myers said the Akronauts have want to achieve that milestone by the end of 2024.

Toward that end, the group has launched Emergence 1, powered by a 98-mm motor, said Johnathan Bettes, another Akronaut member. It reached about 14,000 feet.

A second effort, Emergence 2, was powered by a 152-mm motor and climbed to 22,000 feet. With each launch, the team uses flight data to modify future rocket designs in an effort to reach new heights.

“The bigger the motor, the more burn time and the more propellant,” said Bettes.

Emergence 3, a two-stage rocket, is scheduled for launch in December.

The Akronauts' solid-fuel rockets are powered by a fuel Bettes calls “angry Listerine” for its blue tint. The color is created when the fuel's various components are combined together.

Myers said the Spaceport America Cup is a welcome return after a pandemic absence.

“This will be most of our team’s first time in competition,” she said. The group claims about 200 members comprised of current and graduated students.

Liquid engines and the edge of space

Faculty adviser Mani Kannan, assistant professor of engineering practice in the department of mechanical engineering, said the Akronauts' goals are ambitious.

“They want to go to space by the end of 2024,” he said.

The group has other ambitions.

“They will be the first team in Ohio to test a liquid engine,” Kannan said.

The test was cleared in April after a stringent series of safety requirements were met, Kannan said. One of those is keeping a football-field distance from the burning rocket.

“We have to be 300 feet from the blast area,” he said. “It will be an on-ground test to see if we can create that [needed] thrust.”

The test will take place at an isolated area of western Ohio.

Some members of the Akronauts team hope to go on to careers related to rocketry, while others have different paths in mind. Four former members of the Akronauts work at NASA Glenn in Cleveland or other NASA centers, said Myers. They join several other UA graduates at the space facilities.

Myers said when she completes her engineering degree, she’d like to continue in STEM outreach with students.

Lance Rosko, an Akronaut from Youngstown who handles the student-designed data acquisition device on the group’s rockets, is working for Lighter Than Air Research in Akron and hopes to remain in the field.

Akronaut Julia Carano, a UA student from Medina, said her love of space was sparked at an early age during a visit to the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center when she was 10 years old.

“I’ve wanted to work at NASA for a very long time,” she said.

Thursday’s launch will be live-streamed. For details, go to https://www.spaceportamerica.com/.

Kannan said strong bonds are formed among Akronaut members.

“Even students who have graduated are still [involved],” he said. “This family just keeps growing.”

Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj.

Fuel for the Akronauts

To learn more about the University of Akron Akronauts or to become a donor or sponsor, go to https://bit.ly/39IOqY2. 

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: I Promise students, UA's Akronauts team up for New Mexico launch