REGION — A nine-member team from the Proxima Rocketry Club, comprised of more than 20 Canyon Crest Academy students, is set to compete next month as a finalist in the American Rocketry Challenge in Washington, D.C.
Nearly 5,000 students from 800 teams from 45 states compete to get to the finals. Only the top 100 teams get the chance to compete for a national title along with $100,000, which includes an all-expense paid trip to compete in the International Rocketry Challenge at the Paris Air Show in June.
The American Rocketry Challenge finals are scheduled for May 20 at Great Meadow in The Plains, Virginia.
The club started two years ago when founder and president Vinay Vetticaden, a junior at Canyon Crest, formed a group of students with a passion for rocketry. Chris Flanigan, an aerospace engineer, has served as a mentor for the team since its inception.
“I’d always been interested in rockets and stuff. I looked up at the stars and thought they were cool, and I saw NASA and SpaceX launch, and I thought that is what I wanted to do,” said Vinay. “I started looking at rocketry and wanted to include other people in this. So I brought my friends, and we formed this club. We have just grown over the course of the past two years, and here we are today.”
After not making it to finals last year, Vinay was determined this year would be the year. Once the rules for this year’s competition were released last May, the team began prototyping and testing all different models of rockets.
“We had three designs that we started with. One design was complicated — it had a lot of electronics,” Vinay said. “But we didn’t have enough time to finalize that design and get it to work properly, so we had to resort to our other two designs. We designed and spent a lot of time on these rockets in a simulation, and then we took all the materials and put them together, to fly and launch them. Out of the other two designs, one was just like a normal rocket, and one had three motors, so we went with the normal rocket. The one with three motors was supposed to help it be more consistent, but it was less reliable.”
Each of the Proxima’s team members told The Coast News they were beyond excited to get to meet other rocketry enthusiasts at the finals in D.C. and to be able to learn from their peers in a fun, competitive learning environment.
“It’s a very exciting prospect because we can connect with a lot more people there that we may not have the chance to hear,” said Noam Amihai, a sophomore team member. “Here, we just have these events that we are lucky to attend where we may meet other people from other rocketry booths. Being given a chance to connect with hundreds of people that share the same interests as we will be great.”
The team, sponsored by Carmel Valley STEM Youth, MIT Club of San Diego, and General Atomic, participated in an outreach event in Barrio Logan this past weekend at the Science and Art Expo leading up to their big final challenge.
They hope that participating in events like the expo can inspire youth, and even adults, to be interested in STEM activities like rocketry.
“Our club also wants to put our efforts focused on STEM outreach,” said Karthik Jandhyala, a junior and Proxima’s director of outreach and fundraising. “Not only just in underserved communities but in general, promoting STEM is an integral part of the next generation since topics like AI and other STEM-related items are relevant to how we interact as students. These events are the best way to interact with the community, and they’ll have a strong experience with questions like, ‘How do I know more? How does this impact me? How can I learn?’ It’s fulfilling that curiosity.”
