In the beginning, they dreamt of 50 metres; this year they’ve exceeded 5600. It’s a cliché, but not even the sky is the limit for the Técnico students involved in the Rocket Experiment Division (RED), a branch of the Aerospace Engineering Students’ Organisation at Técnico (AeroTéc) who, on 19 December, reviewed their achievements of 2024 at a ceremony held at the Pavilion of Knowledge.
There was a lot of talk about the year that is now ending, but the rockets on the stage told a longer story – ten rockets arranged on the sides illustrated the missions and vehicles launched by RED since its foundation, including Blimunda, Baltasar and Camões. Particularly noteworthy were the most recent missions, with several models serving as a test for the spaceport in Santa Maria Island, Azores, in September this year.
The event also alluded to what the team has prepared for the future. At the end of the session, with a soundtrack and light effects on stage, the RED project announced the next challenge – the group will enter the 2025 European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC) in the hybrid category. They will thus become the first Portuguese student team competing with a rocket in this category, ‘where only the best European teams can be found’, according to RED coordinator Gonçalo Machado.
‘They have a fantastic project with real challenges and we will continue to support and promote this initiative’, said Pedro Amaral, the Vice-president of Técnico for Corporate Interface, Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The ceremony was also attended by Ricardo Conde, the president of the Portuguese Space Agency, who said he was ‘extremely proud to be among so many people with an impressive innovation mindset’. ‘If anyone can drive innovation in Portugal, it has to be through the universities. When students mobilise, it crates a chain reaction that mobilises the entire sector’, he added.