SANDPOINT — Among Idaho’s 300,000 K-12 students, eight will travel to The Plains, Va., this week as qualifiers for the annual American Rocket Challenge. All of them are from Sandpoint; the two local rocketry teams they make up are among a niche 10% of 1,001 total student groups that met the conditions to participate in one of the world’s most competitive aerospace contests. 

Members of Team Pend Oreille Rocketry (Kieran Ryan, Travis Walker, Carter Thompson, Eli Krenelka) and Team NOVA (Clara Sherman, Meare Greybeal, Daphne Krenelka, Ruby Moremen) have spent the last several months designing, building and testing model rockets to be able to predict their flight and meet a predetermined set of conditions. 

To qualify for the national finals, the teams had to create a model rocket that could carry two raw eggs to an altitude of 790 feet, remain airborne for at least 41 seconds but no more than 44 seconds, and deploy a parachute to return the payload to the ground safely.

At the national contest, students will be given a set of similar parameters to match and will seek to replicate them as closely as possible to avoid gaining points proportional to the magnitude of their error. The team with the lowest overall point total will win the contest. 

The two Sandpoint teams were established in February 2023 by Spacepoint — a local nonprofit dedicated to driving awareness and participation in the space industry — and Lake Pend Oreille School District. 

In their two years of competition, the teams have received financial support from Spacepoint and a collection of local business sponsors. 

Sandpoint airport personnel have provided aviation safety support, and Sandpoint Waldorf School and the owner of Hickey Farms have allowed the teams to launch rockets on their properties. 

To prepare for the national competition, the teams have been creating unique rocket configurations by adjusting their crafts’ weight, shape, size and thrust and logging the resulting flight paths. 

By recording their crafts’ performance and noting the environmental conditions at the time of the launch, students can create a matrix that predicts the combination of components they’ll need to achieve the required flight path in the final competition. 

Thanks to the competition’s industry and government sponsors, more than $100,000 in prize money will be available to the participating teams. Additionally, students will have a chance to connect with and learn from aerospace experts in attendance. 

While in Virginia, the teams will visit landmarks like the National Air and Space Museum and participate in “Rockets on the Hill” — an opportunity for team members to meet D.C. policymakers. 

To fund the trip, the teams are selling donation “tickets” on spacepoint.org. 100% of donations are invested in the program. 

    Team NOVA prepares to launch a rocket in early May.
  

    Members of Team Pend Oreille Rocketry watch a launch as they prepare for the May 17 national competition.