The Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) and Spaceport America are happy to announce the official dates for the 2024 Spaceport America Cup.  This will be the 6th Cup launch event at  Spaceport America in beautiful southern New Mexico.

The dates are     Monday, June 17, 2024 to Saturday, June 22nd, 2024

Each year, over 150 university teams from across the USA and around the world compete at Spaceport America’s amazing Vertical Launch Area for the coveted title of Overall Winner. Competing teams design, build, test and launch their rocket with a payload size of 8.8 pounds to target altitudes of either 10,000 or 30,000 feet. Rockets are typically 4 to 8 inches in diameter and 8 to 20 feet long. Multistage rockets and all chemical propulsion types (solid, liquid, and hybrid) are allowed. For information about competing in the Spaceport America Cup, please visit http://www.soundingrocket.org/

Congratulations to all of the selected teams.  ESRA and Spaceport America look forward to working with you over the next 8 months! NEW MEXICO BOUND!!!!

https://www.soundingrocket.org/2023-sa-cup.html

Out of 175 submitted applications, 158 teams have been selected to compete in the 2023 Spaceport America Cup.

HeroX, as well as soundingrocket.org website and our social media sites will all celebrate this announcement.

Based on feedback from student teams, ESRA will provide an email with details as to why a team's application was declined. This information will be emailed directly to the contacts listed in the application submission.  

Typically, application are declined for one or more of the following reasons:

- Poor overall quality of the application, lacking detail, incorrect or missing data
- Team lacked sufficient experience to safely design, build and launch a rocket in that specific category
- Team did not follow rules and regulations or standards set forth in the DTEG

For teams who were declined, it is highly recommended that you seek other opportunities to compete and/or launch in your region.  The number of international rocketry competitions has "skyrocketed" over the last 3 years.  Latin America, Australia, Canada, Europe, Turkey, Mexico etc. are all fabulous opportunities to gain critical experience and expertise to enhance your application for the 2024 Spaceport America Cup.  In the US, teams should look to compete in the Argonia Cup or any of the great events at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR) site in southern California.

For those teams who will be competing this year, ESRA is working hard to make this not only the largest, but the best Cup event ever held.  Over the next few weeks, there will be many updates and requests to student team leaders.  Please respond to these as quickly as possible to ensure your team is 100% prepared.

For international teams seeking a formal acceptance letters, please send a request to general.info@esrarocket.org

June is only a short 8 months away.  Get busy with your designing, building and testing!

-The ESRA Team

Upon further review, we found a number of discrepancies in the awarding of the efficient launch bonus.  Unfortunately, because we had conflicting information between the launch spotter and recovery records, it was impossible to sort out the differences.  This issue has both helped some teams and disadvantaged others.

Accordingly, and to be fair to all teams, we have decided to zero out that bonus category.  By and large, this made no change to the category winners, with one exception, where the runner-up did change.  Rather than remove the runner-up trophy from that school, we have decided to award a 2nd runner-up trophy in the 10K-SRAD-Hybrid/Liquid to McGill University.
 
Revised scores are posted on the Events page.

From the ESRA President's Desk:

This year's competition was filled with many firsts and challenges we've never faced before as an organization.  We had more teams than ever in the history of IREC.  We had our first significant weather delay losing over a full day in getting rockets into the air.  We faced logistical challenges that meant, to preserve the integrity of the competition, a delay in announcing the final awards winners until all data was collected and verified.  All in all, while it was a challenging event for the teams and for ESRA, I'm proud at what we've all accomplished together.  We're already taking these lessons to heart for 2023 and looking forward to an even stronger competition!

On an additional note, several hybrid teams were faced with last minute insurance issues.  I want to personally assure you that ESRA is very committed to fostering and supporting all hybrid teams to the best of our ability.  We are taking steps to resolve this issue going forward.  There have been some rumors that our friends at the Tripoli Rocketry Association (TRA) were a cause for the delays.  That information is absolutely incorrect, in fact if it had not been for the support of TRA (and many ESRA volunteers are members of TRA already) and their expertise in the field of amateur high power rocketry, we simply could not safely conduct the competition. 

A huge thank you goes out TRA and also to the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) for their strong support and guidance to ESRA for Spaceport America Cup.  We couldn't do it without you.

Go nominal!
Cliff Olmsted

Spaceport America Cup wrapped up in the 3rd week of June and the online awards ceremony for the category winners and the winner of the Genesis Cup Trophy for the overall Spaceport America Cup winner is coming soon!

You can catch the 2022 Spaceport America Cup brought to you by Sierra Space, Awards Ceremony, LIVE on YouTube this Saturday, July 16, 2022, at noon MT.
Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_vIuR4516Q

ESRA and Spaceport America are looking forward to the 2022 Spaceport America Cup after we have taken a hiatus from in-person competitions for the past 2 years!  The deadline is soon, October 15!  Be sure to apply on the 2022 HeroX website at www.herox.com/SpaceportAmericaCup2022 and we'll look forward to reviewing your applications!

ESRA is proud to announce the winners of the 2021 Virtual Spaceport America Cup!  By all accounts it was an excellent competition (short of actually being together in person).  Head over to our events page to see the results.

Thank you to all 75 teams who participated!

Also, dates for the 2022 competition have been set!  We'll see you June 21-25 in Las Cruces!

We've been very busy behind the scenes gearing up for an exciting virtual competition as well as, for the first time every, lining up a series of fantastic keynote speakers and technical forum topics for this special 3 day event!

Visit https://www.accelevents.com/e/2021VirtualSpaceportAmericaCup to purchase a team or general admission ticket!  All competing teams must purchase at least 1 team ticket which includes a block of 10 individual tickets valid for all 3 days of the event. Additional team or individual student tickets can be purchased for larger teams.

General Admission tickets are for interested public, friends, and family.  All tickets are valid for the full 3 days of the event! 

This is it. We know you've been waiting, and ESRA has been working late into the evenings reviewing all team applications.  Congratulations to the 150 teams selected to compete in the 2021 Spaceport America Cup!
 
The complete list of teams and team IDs is available on the Spaceport America Cup 2021 event page.
 
Below is the breakdown of team locations and competition categories.  This year, 125 teams are joining us again from last year's canceled event while we also welcome 25 new teams.  All together, 63% of the student teams are from colleges and universities across the United States while 36% are international from across the planet.  ESRA along with Spaceport America, Space Dynamics Laboratory, our sponsors, and our vendors cannot wait to see what you bring to the competition.  Let's get started!