The ATLAS Flight Center, has been the setting for a historic milestone in Spanish university rocketry: the first launch of a sounding rocket in the province of Jaén. The Faraday Rocketry UPV team, made up of 46 students from the Universitat Politècnica de València, successfully validated their rocket ‘Rompetechos’, which was entirely designed and built by the team.

The rocket stands 1.9 meters tall, weighs 16 kg, and has a diameter of 114 mm. It is constructed from carbon fiber and aluminum. It reached nearly 10,000 feet in altitude (around 3 km) before beginning its descent using a dual parachute recovery system. During the flight, the team validated several in-house technologies, including a custom rocket motor, modular avionics, and an airbrake system.

Macarena Márquez, head of the ATLAS center, emphasized: “The launch of the rocket by the Faraday Rocketry UPV team at the ATLAS Flight Test Center marks a double historic milestone: it is the first sounding rocket launched from these facilities and the first ever to take off from the province of Jaén. This strategic collaboration between CATEC and the Universitat Politècnica de València strengthens ATLAS’s role as a reference infrastructure for aerospace vehicle experimentation and as a catalyst for knowledge transfer between academia and the technology sector.”

Faraday Rocketry UPV is a multidisciplinary team founded in 2021 as part of the UPV’s Generación Espontánea program. It includes students from aerospace, mechanical, computer, and electronic engineering, as well as marketing, business, and fine arts. Organized into eight departments, the team has become a European benchmark in university rocketry.

They will represent Spain in the upcoming edition of the European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC), the continent’s most prestigious competition, after winning the Flight Award in 2023 with a prototype that reached nearly 3 km in altitude on a minimal budget.

This launch reinforces ATLAS’s position as a strategic environment for the development and validation of advanced aerospace technologies, and highlights its commitment to innovation and young talent.

🎥 Watch the launch video here: https://youtu.be/CVNZXoBuVP0?si=VhV_PR_I4hrPVSxj