American Rocketry Challenge
American Rocketry Challenge
2024 – The Biggest Ever (March 2024)
When American Rocketry Challenge 2024 registration closed out, the program enrolled 922 teams of 6th through 12th graders from 45 states this year (click here for list of teams), the largest enrollment in the 22-year history of the program. This is the premier “pay it forward” outreach program of the NAR, the way that we build our membership of the future, and thanks to sustained support from throughout the NAR and from the US aerospace industry, it is doing great.
It is the time in the program’s annual cycle where teams need to be flying if they expect to be successful; there is only a month remaining before the April 8 deadline for submission of qualification flights. There is a strong role here for every NAR section by providing welcoming, support, and flight opportunity at your flying site. Remember that teams can only make three “official” qualification flight attempts and these must be declared to an official NAR adult-member flight observer before liftoff. We will count the best two scores (or the only two scores if teams submit only two, which they can do) toward the ranking that will determine which 100 teams get an invitation to come to the May 18 National Finals. The rankings are based on the SUM of the two best scores, so teams must have no less than two scores on the books to be eligible. The score-reporting form is located HERE on the ARC program website www.rocketcontest.org.
The ARC National Finals will be held the weekend of May 17-19 at Great Meadow, in The Plains, VA, 45 miles west of Washington, DC. The 100 best teams from across the nation will compete there head-to-head for the $100,000 in program prizes. It takes an NAR range crew of about 115 volunteers to put on this large, complex, tightly-scheduled event and this NAR team needs about 10 more volunteers to fill out the roster. If you’re interested in being part of the team that puts on this event, please contact the NAR ARC Manager, Trip Barber, at ahbarber@cox.net, preferably by March 15.
American Rocketry Challenge 2024:
The Largest Ever (January 2024)
The American Rocketry Challenge (ARC, formerly known as TARC) has more registered teams this year than ever before in its 22-year history: more than the 900 that were enrolled in 2020. This brings the total of teams that have enrolled over this history to over 16,000. This is great news for the ARC program and for the future of our hobby, the NAR, and the US aerospace industry. The near-final list of teams is posted HERE.
Many of these teams will be coming to NAR launches over the next several months to practice-launch and then to fly their official local qualification flights (which must be done by April 8) in order to try to get flight scores that will earn one of the 100 spots at the National Finals on May 18 and a chance at the program’s $100,000 in prize money. ARC is the NAR’s most successful “pay forward” program, our best opportunity to pass along the skills, enthusiasm, and culture of safety that are the hallmarks of the NAR. Please help these teams learn the skills of safe rocket-flying and support them when they ask to come fly with you. You can read more about the program and this year’s program rules at the event website, www.rocketcontest.org
2024 American Rocketry Challenge (November 2023)
The registration deadline for the 2024 American Rocketry Challenge (ARC) is December 1. This is the NAR’s premier pay-forward STEM program, offering teams of 6th through 12th graders the opportunity to compete for $100,000 in prizes – but you have to register first! Teams can have 3 to 10 members, and membership can be changed after initial registration, up until the team’s first official qualification flight. So if your team has all the required forms for at least three members, go ahead and register then add others later if you need to. For registration, how-to-resources, and other information about the event go to the event website www.rocketcontest.org
American Rocketry Challenge 2024 Registration Opens (September 2023)
Schools are back in session, vacations are over, so it’s time to get busy with the 2024 American Rocketry Challenge (ARC), the NAR’s premier STEM program and the world’s largest student rocketry competition. Registration opened in June and remains open until December 1. Go to the event website www.rocketcontest.org and get started! NAR members are our best recruiting source to get the word out to schools and youth groups about this program and we count on them to mentor teams in rocketry skills.
The ARC is a design-build-fly program where student teams of three to ten 6th through 12th graders compete to achieve the year’s flight performance goals with their egg-lofting rockets and be one of the top 100 teams that are invited to come fly in the National Finals on May 18, 2024 in The Plains, VA for a chance to win $100,000 in prizes and, for the overall winning team, a free trip to the Farnborough Air Show in England. Each year about 800 teams (4500 students) enter from all across the US.
Here are the key elements of the 2024 challenge; complete program rules are on the event website and on the NAR website page for the event, https://www.nar.org/team-america/
- Same dimension (650mm minimum length), weight (650 grams maximum liftoff), and motor power limits (80 N-sec) as always
- Altitude goal 820 feet for qualification (different for the Finals)
- Duration window 43-46 seconds
- One raw egg payload, any orientation
- Must use two different body diameters (no less than 6 inches of each): top part no larger than T-70 and the bottom part no smaller than 63.5mm (bigger than T-70 but a bit less than T-80)
- All parts must recover connected together under parachute
- Allowed altimeters: Perfectflite Pnut and Firefly; Jolly Logic Altimeter ONE or TWO (but not THREE)