Students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst team carry their high-powered rocket toward the launch pad at NASA’s 2025 Student Launch launch day competition in Toney, Alabama, on April 4, 2025. More than 980 middle school, high school, and college students from across the nation launched more than 40 high-powered amateur rockets just north of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This year marked the 25th anniversary of the competition.
To compete, students follow the NASA engineering design lifecycle by going through a series of reviews for nine months leading up to launch day. Each year, a payload challenge is issued to the university teams, and this year’s task focused on communication. Teams were required to have “reports” from STEMnauts, non-living objects inside their rocket, that had to relay real-time data to the student team’s mission control. This Artemis Student Challenge took inspiration from the agency’s Artemis missions, where NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefit, and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
See highlights from the 2025 Student Launch.
Text credit: NASA/Beth Ridgeway
Image credit: NASA/Charles Beason
来自马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校的学生团队正在将他们的高动力火箭搬运到发射台，这是在2025年4月4日于阿拉巴马州托尼举行的NASA 2025年度学生火箭发射日竞赛活动现场。今年，来自全美的980多名中学、高中及大学学生参与了比赛，在位于阿拉巴马州亨茨维尔NASA马歇尔太空飞行中心以北的发射场，共发射了40多枚高动力业余火箭。今年的活动也是该赛事举办的第25周年。
为了参与比赛，学生们需要遵循NASA的工程设计生命周期，在发射日前的9个月内进行一系列的评审。今年的赛事主题围绕“通信”展开，要求大学生团队在他们的火箭内部放置名为“STEMnauts”的非生命体，并使其在飞行过程中向团队的任务控制中心实时传输数据。这个阿尔忒弥斯学生挑战赛灵感来源于NASA的阿尔忒弥斯任务，该任务旨在将宇航员送往月球，进行科学探索、促进经济发展，并为未来首次载人火星任务奠定基础。
文字来源: NASA/Beth Ridgeway
图片来源: NASA/Charles Beason
