After walking a long road, Space Concordia is finally reaching their final sprint towards the finish line. The student club is making their bid to launch their Starsailor rocket to the edge of space: 100 km up, better known as the Karman Line.
The suborbital launch of Starsailor is scheduled for sometime between August 8th and 18th, and will be taking place at a site north of Mistassini Lake, Quebec. If successful, it will not only be the first launch from Quebec, but also first student-built rocket to reach space.
SpaceQ reached out to Oleg Khalimonov, Program Lead of Space Concordia’s Rocketry Division, to find out more about the launch. He provided comments, as well as copies of Space Concordia’s releases on the launch.
On site with confirmed launch window
Khalimonov confirmed that they have received authorization from Transport Canada, and that the launch would be happening between the 8th and 18th, as well as confirming that they would be launching from the territory of the Cree First Nation of Mistissini, “about 1,000km north from Montreal” and “about 250 km north from Mistissini, Quebec.” Khalimonov said it was “the most beautiful place on Earth.”
Space Concordia confirmed in a release that the launch would be taking place sometime between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. Eastern on one of the days in the window.
As of this past weekend, Khalimonov said, the team was “on site and have been setting up for the past week. Our tower is being set up and the rocket is being assembled, undergoing pre-flight testing and checklist,” he said, with an eye to being ready to launch on the 8th depending on conditions. Those conditions may be tricky, however: he added that “the winds are high and the weather is cold with on/off wind.” It even snowed on their way up.
Khaliminov said that this initial launch is intended to “safely conduct a first launch attempt of the rocket,” and that “the complexity of the launch is high, and getting to the point where every subsystem passes preflight check and we are confident of its success is a mission success.”
“If everything is functional, we expect to surpass the Karman line with some margin,” Khaliminov said, but “altitude is secondary” for this initial attempt. “If for whatever reason we are unable to launch”, he said, “we will cycle back and make whatever changes are necessary in readiness for another launch attempt.”
Khaliminov said that launch would be live streamed, and be available to watch on their YouTube channel. (And available on SpaceQ starting August 8.)
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Seven years to the Karman Line
Starsailor is an ambitious project for a student club: a 12.8 metres (42-foot), bi-propellant, pressure-fed rocket, designed and built by Space Concordia to go higher than any student rocket ever made.
Space Concordia originally designed their initial rocket, Supersonice, as part of the 2018 HeroX Base 11 Space Challenge, which had student rocketry clubs designing and (potentially) building rockets to reach the Karman line by the end of 2021. Most teams’ progress in the competition was delayed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and the competition concluded in 2022 without a clear victor.
Despite that, however, Space Concordia designed a new rocket, Starsailor, and continued on towards their goal of reaching the Karman Line from Canadian soil, with a Canadian rocket, built by a Canadian student rocketry team.
It’s been a difficult road to walk; their release said that they’ve had to deal with seven years of challenges and setbacks, like “blown engines, shattered test rigs, and countless versions of software, hardware, and paperwork,” not to mention a worldwide pandemic. “The engineering was never the hard part,” they emphasized.
Still, after all that, they’ve completed 17 status fire engine tests, as well as finishing key cryogenic and hot-fire tests of Starsailor’s Stewart engine last year. With those challenges overcome, this week’s test launch is the next big step.
Launch collaboration with the Cree Nation of Mistissini
Part of that next big step, however, has been this new cultural partnership with the Cree Nation of Mistissini. They provided the launch site, and have helped with every step of the preparation for launch.
The release said that Space Concordia is “deeply honored to launch in collaboration with the Cree Nation of Mistissini” and said that their support “has been vital in bringing this historic event to life.” Khaliminov said that they “have been amazing,” and have been “extraordinarily generous in helping us out…with logistics and operations.”
Space Concordia said that it “reflects a shared desire to inspire the next generation, foster meaningful dialogue, and create lasting bonds between student engineers and the people of Eeyou Istchee.” The collaboration has included “educational and cultural engagement activities in Mistissini” with community members interacting directly with the rocket team and “integrating the local community into the heart of the project.”
Pamela Macleod, a member of the Mistissini Council, said that they are “truly excited to have our community of Mistissini be a part of this unique and historic event,” and that the launch “creates an opportunity for meaningful exchange and an interesting learning experience for our community members, especially our youth, and the Space Concordia team.”
Khaliminov said that the rocket has also received a new Cree name: Chikabesh, which is “a hero from old legends who once visited the moon.” Chikabesh (also referred to as Chaakapesh or Tshakapesh) appears in both Cree and Inuit legend, and is also associated with solar eclipses.
