A group from the University of Southern California ’s Rocket Propulsion Lab ( RPL ) has become the first team of bookman to make and launch a rocket into outer place successfully . As far as pupil skill labor go , that ’s unquestionably more telling than the baking soda volcano you made in third grade .
After blasting off fromSpaceport Americain New Mexico on the morning of April 21 , theTraveler IVrocketreached its apogeeat 103,571 meters ( 339,800 feet ) , with an precariousness of 5,120 meters ( 16,800 feet ) , make it the record holder for the highest altitude ever reached by a scholarly person built and designed rocket salad . It also managed to accomplish over 17 g ’s at its eye - lachrymation top speed of 5,452 kilometers ( 3,388 miles ) per hour .
“ We can say with 90 pct certainty that RPL ’s latest spaceshot , Traveler IV , passed the Kármán line , the distinguish bound between the Earth ’s atm and space , ” Neil Tewskbury , lead operations officer at RPL , said in astatement .
Named after the Hungarian - American mathematician and aerospace engineer Theodore von Kármán , theKármán linecan be found at an altitude of just about 100 kilometers ( 62 miles ) above sea level .
This is widely conceive the edge of infinite because it ’s the altitude at which the atmosphere becomes too thin to hold aeronautic flight . However , there is no strict boundary where this come , as the atmosphere just gets thinner and thinner with altitude , and most definitions are fairly arbitrary . For some view , the Kármán line – and the journeying of the Traveler IV – is almost 10 metre high than a commercial airplane flight , as well as well higher than aurora borealis and meteors .
Like all successes , it took a lot of failure to get here . Both Traveler I and Traveler II break loose shortly after launching . Traveler IIIedged closer to the conclusion goal in the crepuscule of 2018 but also ended in nonstarter due to amiscommunication problem at the launching . By December , the squad was back in the lab working on Traveler IV . The same team are already working on their next task , hoping to collapse their own world track record using aliquid - fuel vehicle .
“ After near 15 years and over a million hours of work , RPL has finally achieved its goal of being the first student group to plunge the first student - designed and construct rocket past the Kármán demarcation , ” added Dennis Smalling , chief student applied scientist of RPL .
He continue : “ The ability of this team to overcome blow and unendingly innovate new engineering has been inspire . I ’m so proud of what this lab has been able to fulfil so far and I ’m fabulously excited to see where RPL goes from here . ”
