We would like to start off by thanking everyone for the generous donations you made to support this team during our 2018-2019 journey. Without your support we would not have the opportunity to build rockets and learn about aerospace, never mind have the opportunity to travel to Huntsville and present our work to NASA. For this we are all eternally grateful for each and every one of you.

We are launching a new Minutefund at the following link for the 2019-2020 season: https://minutefund.umass.edu/project/18958 . Below is a summary of the season we were able to have due to your generous donations last year. If you would like to continue to support us in this upcoming season head to our new page. 

Summary:

The ultimate goal of the team was to launch at the final competition at the Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama. To this end the team was completely successful but getting there was not without a tremendous amount of adversity.

The main challenge the team had to overcome was the crash of our first full scale rocket. This was the culmination of the whole years’ work at that point. Hundreds of pages written for reports and countless hours working with hardware. Months of work planning, designing, and building the rocket. The rocket launched as normal, but as it reached its peak the black powder charges meant to deploy the drogue parachute failed to do so. The rocket went into freefall from 6200 ft and hit the frozen ground at ~500 mph completely destroying it.

Not only was this crash devastating to the team because of what that rocket had represented in terms of time, effort, and money but it also seemed as if this event represented the end of the teams participation in the competition as the deadline to have a successful full scale launch was less than 10 days away.  

Upon returning to UMass late that night the team met and decided to anonymously vote on whether we should attempt the monumental task of building a new full-scale launch ready rocket within the week. The result was a nearly unanimous yes even though every team member knew the immense time sacrifice this would require with no guarantee of success.

After a week of expedited shipping and near constant work by the dedicated members of the team our final rocket, named Clementine, was complete. That Saturday, six days after the crash we had a successful launch. This task had seemed nearly impossible a week before and thoroughly impressed the members of NASA we presented to. That week taught us a lot about failure and its important place in engineering and life as well as the great rewards of learning from failure and persevering.

The rest of the year continued with technical and logistical challenges that the team overcame on our way to a successful launch week in Alabama.

Without the funding the team received from you and others who believed in the importance of the UMass Rocket Team we would have been forced to drop out of the competition following the crash and we would have missed out on the best engineering experience we have ever had. For your part in this we are so incredibly grateful.

This year we have a new challenge of building a lunar ice collecting rover that will be contained inside the rocket and deployed upon touchdown along with building a completely new rocket, as required by the competition. We are looking forward to rising to the challenges this year has already set before us. If at all possible we would greatly appreciate your continued support, it really does mean so much to us.

Warm wishes,

The UMass Rocket Team

Hi everyone - 

Thanks to your overwhelming generosity, we have reached our $4000 goal!! This has been absolutely incredible and we sincerely appreciate anyone who made a contribution to the team.

We are still accepting donations via the Minute Fund for the next few days, as we have a larger team than last year and the trip to Alabama will be more costly. Additionally, should any funds be left over from this year, they will roll over into next to help the team get off the ground as quickly as possible. Again, thank you to all those who have donated for your support!

Thank you! 

-UMass Rocket Team 

Hi everyone - 

Thanks to your overwhelming generosity, we have just about reached our original goal in less than HALF the time of our campaign! This has been absolutely incredible and we sincerely appreciate anyone who made a contribution to the team.

To keep momentum going into the holiday season, we've increased our fundraising goal to $4,000, which would be able to cover almost all travel expenses to Launch Week in Alabama! Again, thank you to all those who have donated for your support!

Thank you! 

-UMass Rocket Team