We are proud to announce that following months of design, testing and collaboration our HPR team finally launched their ‘Nemo’ rocket at Exotopic's MACH-26 Rocketry Competition - all the way up North for us in Southampton- in Machrihanish Airbase, near Campbeltown, Scotland.

Prior to launch we were lucky enough to meet many teams from around the world, as well as the officials, experts and VIPs there – including ESA reserve astronauts Dr Meganne Christian whose signature was added to our comically large wrench.

To begin the launch, we successfully completed three consecutive ejection tests and received final approval from the Range Safety Officers. A good start. Then, powered by a mighty K695 motor, Nemo launched with a peak acceleration of 141.5 m/s² (14.4 Gs) and a maximum velocity of 274.6 m/s (Mach 0.81). It had been designed to be intentionally overstable for flight, with a stability margin of 3.42 calibres. Nemo soared to an apogee of 1,951 m, leaving us barely a big orange space shuttle tank away from the Category II target altitude of 2 km.

Next it successfully deployed both the drogue and main parachutes, ejecting the bright orange nose cone with our CanSat payload equipped with three 4K cameras, GPS tracking, radio beacons and its own bright pink parachutes.

Back on the ground we were able to find and recover the main airframe and avionics bay intact. However, despite being highly visible over the electromagnetic spectrum, we could not find the neon-orange nose cone and its CubeSat payload.

If anyone happens to find Nemo, do let us know!

Overall, Mach-26 was an outstanding engineering experience for SUSF, where HPR team achieved fantastic results, gained valuable experiences and had an opportunity to interact with international rocketry community.

Well done to all the teams that made it to Mach-26 and made Mach-X the competition that it is. Thank you to Extopic for hosting, as well as all the other organisations and individuals that made it possible, and very worthwhile, to be there alongside all these remarkable teams!