Club blasts off to rocketry finals
Saratoga High School rocketry club members, from left, Rahul Kumar, Aden Choy, Diana Katchour and David Wang will compete in the national finals of the 2015 Team America Rocketry Challenge in Virginia in May.
Every Sunday afternoon, a group of Saratoga teens meets to discuss rockets. Armed with their data analysis, every once in a while they’ll make the 20- minute drive from their hometown down to Moffett Field to launch the model rocket that they built.
Earlier this month, the teens received an email from the Team America Rocketry Challenge organization informing them that they were in the top 100 teams nationwide and one of four teams in the Bay Area that had qualified for the 2015 TARC national finals, one of the world’s largest rocketry competitions.
To qualify, according to Diana Katchour, captain of the Rocketry Club at Saratoga High, the group had to demonstrate that they could design and build a model rocket that can travel to a height of 800 feet and back within 46 to 48 seconds, similar to the aerospace industry’s engineering design process. What’s more, each rocket had to carry one raw egg — representing an astronaut — that must return to the ground undamaged. The group was judged upon how close the rockets came to the required height and time and whether their egg made it back in one piece. The Saratoga team delivered and more, so the news came as little surprise to the team members.
“We were actually pretty confident that we would get in because the scores were incredibly good this year, but we were pretty excited,” said Diana.
The team of four consists of Diana, a junior; sophomore David Wang; and freshmen Aden Choy and Rahul Kumar. In May, the four will travel to Virginia to compete head- tohead at the final flyoff for scholarships and prizes totaling more than $ 60,000 and the chance to travel to the Paris International Air Show in June to represent the U. S. in the international competition.