Twice a year, Mountain View High School’s rocket team leaves early Saturday morning in a school van packed with their tents, backpacks, sleeping bags, propane stove, and, most importantly, pieces of their 10-foot high rocket.
Three hours later, the team arrives in Fresno, where they compete against hobbyists, collegiate clubs and even international teams in the Tripoli Rocketry Competition.
Most competitors strive to launch their projectiles above 2,000 feet, but not Mountain View High. Instead, they’ve decided to focus on creating a microgravity environment by launching their rocket in a perfectly symmetrical arc shape known as a parabolic trajectory. At the rocket’s highest peak, the vertical velocity will cancel the pull of gravity and achieve a state of weightlessness referred to as zero gravity.
Mountain View High AP physics teacher Stephen Widmark started the team in 2016, after learning about Mountain View Educational Foundation’s funding opportunities. Flying rockets had always been Widmark’s dream, so he reached out to students and attained certification to handle rockets on the launch pad.
With little help from Widmark, team members worked on the rocket after a few weeks of initial training.
Each of the 12 current students has a specialized role, including programming the flight computer, assembling and launching the rocket, deploying the rocket parachute and interpreting flight data. A few are also junior certified in high-powered rocketry, so they’re able to handle the motor fuel.
“It doesn’t look all that complicated,” Widmark said. “But believe me, there’s a lot of moving parts under the hood, both software and hardware.”
To create the rocket, the team constructed the physical shell from laser-cut wood and metal, which later evolved to include electric fan jets, internal microcontroller boards and a monitoring camera. They also coded the flight computer using a specialized language called Arduino.
With all the technical complexities, there’s a lot at stake when the rocket is finally ready to launch.
“It’s a little stressful, you know, because no matter how much preparation you do, everything has to go together correctly on the launch day,” said senior and parachute deployer Garrett Freeland.
However, the preparation and work that goes into the rocket doesn’t stop at launch. While it’s in the air, students track the rocket’s path for recovery and equipment reuse, which enables them to lower their material costs and avoid starting from scratch each time.
Despite using the same rocket body, the team constantly re-engineers the rocket. For instance, when the wire connections aren’t tight enough, the signal won’t go through to the launchers, and students need to repair it before flying.
By constructing and repairing the rocket, team members can apply physics theories and see tangible results during the launch, said rocket team deployment technician and senior Yael Zayats. They also monitor the flight and hypothesize what changes they should make to achieve zero gravity.
“It’s giving us a really, really good experience of working on an actual team and building something that’s real that we get to see the result of,” Zayats said.
Despite the team’s successful launches, very few students know about the rocket group, Freeland said. Interested Mountain View High students should reach out to Widmark in the fall.
Being part of a rocket team is an opportunity not usually available to high school students, said motor technician and senior Callie Lenz. The long hours in the van and the classroom are all worth it when team members see the rocket ascend.
“You know that you did your job right and everyone else did theirs,” Lenz said. “It showed how much we accomplished.”
