UPV becomes a sensation in EuRoc

For the second time, Faraday UPV attended the European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoc), where it faced rivals with budgets a hundred times its own. A hundredfold. Despite this, Faraday Rocketry UPV was the David in a world of Goliaths. This team, integrated into the UPV Design Factory platform, won the most challenging and exciting category of the competition: flight. Their rocket, christened Genesis, reached a straight vertical ascent of 2,914.3 metres and also achieved a fully controlled landing. It was the best performance.

Two factors help us get an idea of the feat. On the one hand, the cost of Genesis was just over 3,000 euros, while the annual budget of some of its competitors ranged from 250 to 300,000 euros. This is in addition to the experience gained from other participations in EuRoc or similar events. In this sense, the trajectory of some European universities in this kind of event started in the last century, while Faraday UPV was born in the middle of 2021.

Under these premises, the result obtained, first in the flight category (Flight Award) and fifth in the general classification, is an a priori unimaginable success for the 40 team members. Nacho Coello, one of the co-founders of Faraday UPV, expresses it perfectly: "The flight sums up all the work you have been doing for months or years. It is the big moment and, undoubtedly, the queen category. To have excelled in it is the ultimate". "We are still on a cloud. We are not yet aware of what we have achieved," adds Francesc Coello, Nacho's brother and also co-founder of the squad.

The competition

The latest edition of the EuRoc was held in the Portuguese city of Constancia. Reaching this location to compete in the final stage is already a success, as the jury evaluates the aspiring projects beforehand, and the demands are at their highest level. This year, for example, 25 teams out of the 48 that initially applied made it to the final phase. Almost fifty per cent fell by the wayside at the first hurdle.

Therefore, the overall ranking of this competition considers several parameters. Before the final stage, the technical report of the project is evaluated, and then it is time to present and defend its merits before the evaluating committee. The last and final step is the flight test, where there is only one attempt and uncontrollable and even unforeseen factors such as the weather intervene. T the jury also takes into account the team spirit of each squadron.

Project Kármán

The great result achieved by Faraday Rocketry in the EuRoc will be, in the words of Nacho Coello, "a huge push" to continue with the two lines of work that remain open. On the one hand, the team will continue to improve the Genesis and other rockets in order to continue reaping success in the competitions in which they are entered. On the other hand, they will try to become the first European student team to reach the Kármán line (100 kilometres above sea level) with a rocket, which has only been achieved by one university in the United States: the University of Southern California.

"We are very excited about the opportunity to carry the name of the UPV, our sponsors and the people who trust us into space. We are also the first European team in our field," says Francesc Coello.

The ambition to learn and improve themselves is not lacking in these students of engineering such as Aerospace, Mechanics, Computer Science or Electronics. By the way, the Faraday Rocketry team is also looking for new profiles to join the Fine Arts and ADE team, among others.

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