Sydney Rocketry Students Crowned World Champions
The University of Sydney Rocketry Team was announced as the winner of the 2025 International Rocket Engineering Competition back in June, taking out first place with their latest rocket, Pardalote.
In addition to winning the overall New Horizon Award, the team also secured first place in the Student Research and Developed Hybrid/Liquid Category and were runners-up for both the Jim Furfaro Award for Technical Excellence and the Charles Hoult Award for Modelling and Simulation.
A record-setting 156 student rocketry teams, composed of thousands of university students from across 19 countries, travelled to Midland, Texas to compete in a tense 6 days of competition. The students battled harsh weather conditions including blistering heat and sudden windstorms. 136 teams had their rockets successfully achieve lift off.
Soaring to a height of 10,342 feet – or 3 point 15 km, with an error margin of just 3.42 percent, Pardalote achieved the most accurate apogee ever recorded by a 10k SRAD Hybrid launch vehicle in the history of the competition.
The achievement makes the USYD rocketry team two-time world champions – in 2022, the last time the team attended, they also brought home gold (then called the American Spaceport Cup) with their rocket, Bluewren. This makes USYD Rocketry the only multiple time winners of the overall competition.