American Rocketry Challenge

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)