2019-2020

This year NCSSM is sponsoring five teams in the American Rocketry Challenge, the world’s largest rocket contest with nearly 5,000 students nationwide competing each year. The contest gives middle and high school students the opportunity to design, build and launch model rockets and hands-on experience solving engineering problems.

NCSSM Rocketry is a team of students from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. NCSSM Rocketry strives to build a high powered, supersonic rocket that will conduct research in the atmosphere. A variety of instruments will be integrated into the payload section of the rocket such as altimeters, air sample collection, camera, gyroscope, accelerometer, and a vibration monitoring device. Collectively this payload and its components are known as the Best Rocketry Research Determination System (BRRDS, pronounced birds). The purpose and ultimate goal of the BRRDS is to collect data concerning the movement of the rocket as well as the atmosphere it travels through. Our plan for researching the motion and trajectory of the rocket is to collect data from a sensory array known as BRRDS and compare it between subsonic and supersonic flights. We hope BRRDS will be improved through testing and become a standard sensor system for future rockets.