In late August, the University of Toronto Aerospace Team (UTAT) Rocketry division placed second in the advanced category— and cemented their place in the record books — at Launch Canada 2024.  

“Our rocket, Defiance Mk. IV, reached 30,000 feet, which is the Canadian amateur rocketry record for a rocket with a custom-built engine,” says Luca Castelletto (EngSci 2T3 + PEY), the team’s former director.   

“We’re incredibly proud of setting that record. This was our team’s third year in the competition. The first year, we launched our rocket and won the competition; the second year we had an ignition failure and couldn’t launch. So, we knew the different outcomes that we could expect and prepared as best we could.”  

The third annual Launch Canada event, an industry-partnered intercollegiate rocket competition, featured 24 student rocketry teams from across the country, and took place from August 17-23 in Mattagami, Ont.  

As the team began to prepare for the competition in the fall of 2023, their goal was to improve on the iterative design of their rocket. While the base technology of the engine stays the same, each progression introduces new components that enables increased performance.   

Defiance Mk. IV was built using a hybrid-engine design approach that allowed for more efficiency to reach higher altitudes. The 18-foot rocket combines elements of a liquid engine — where two liquid propellants, fuel and oxidizer, are stored separately— and a solid engine — where the propellent is packed into a solid cylinder.   

“In any fire, you need fuel and you need an oxidizer to provide the oxygen. We used paraffin wax as our fuel, which burns quite well. And since there isn’t enough ambient oxygen in the air for our rocket, we used nitrous oxide as the oxidizer,” says Castelletto. 

For the first Launch Canada Competition in 2022, the team introduced Defiance Mk. II and won first place with Canada’s first-ever experimental hybrid rocket launch. The next year, they attempted to launch Defiance Mk. III.   

“In 2023, the rocket was ready to launch — it was lifted, it was filled, everything was disconnected and safe. But when we pressed the button, we didn’t get a spark,” says Castelletto.  

“It was tough for the team, but we came back more resilient than ever and wanting to prove that despite the challenge and despite the failed attempt, we could launch this year.” 

This time the UTAT team anticipated a demanding workload during the competition week that involved long days, late nights and daily drives between the rural launch site and accommodations that were 90 minutes away in Timmins. But they ensured a cohesive atmosphere where every member understood their responsibilities within the sub-teams.   

“Everyone worked together to make our rocket special enough to set the record,” says Castelletto.  

“With our propulsion system, we engineered a solution to reduce the time it took to ready our rocket by nearly two hours. We also extensively tested our explosive recipe for the ignition system — including over 50 tests in various circumstances — to ensure its success at launch.  

“Our avionics team worked hard to make sure that we had communication with the rocket, that we were able to control the values and knew where it was and how fast it was going. And we built an effective recovery system that allowed our rocket to come down on parachutes. 

While 22 team members travelled to Timmins for the competition, for safety reasons, only 10 were able to search for the rocket after the launch.  

“Seeing the joy on the rest of the team’s faces when we emerged from the forest carrying our rocket on our shoulders is a memory I will never forget,” Castelletto says.  

“We couldn’t fully recover Defiance Mk. II in 2022, but this time around, we launched our rocket, recovered it and brought it back to Toronto.”  

The August launch marked the end of UTAT’s Defiance series of rockets. The team will be continuing to work on a new hybrid rocket design called Destiny that they hope will be the first staged hybrid rocket in Canada — at present, only staged rockets using solid fuel have flown in Canada.  

While Destiny is in early stages of development, UTAT is also aiming to launch its first liquid rocket, named Discovery, at Launch Canada 2025.  

“We are very excited about this, we have never launched a liquid rocket before,” says Joséa Tarulli (Year 4 EngSci), UTAT’s current rocketry director. 

“As we look into more experimental technology, we know that is best to start a new design cycle for our hybrid rocket program. This new program will allow us to build on the knowledge we have gained from Defiance as well as allowing us to improve on the design.”