Students' 'homemade' rocket soars faster and farther into space than any other amateur spacecraft — smashing 20-year records

Aftershock II, a new rocket built by students at the University of Southern California, recently broke a number of 20-year-old amateur spaceflight records for altitude, power and speed. It reached more than 470,000 feet above Earth's surface and went "hypersonic."

A group of U.S. students has smashed a series of world records after launching a "homemade" rocket farther and faster into space than any other amateur rocket. The student-made missile soared 90,000 feet (27,400 meters) beyond the previous record-holder — a rocket launched more than 20 years ago.

The record-breaking rocket, named Aftershock II, was designed and built by students at the University of Southern California's (USC) Rocket Propulsion Lab (RPL) — a group run entirely by undergraduate students. The students launched Aftershock II on Oct. 20 from a site in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. The rocket stood about 14 feet (4 meters) tall and weighed 330 pounds (150 kilograms).

The rocket broke the sound barrier just two seconds after liftoff and reached its maximum speed roughly 19 seconds after launch, the RPL team wrote in a Nov. 14 paper summarizing the launch. The rocket's engine then burned out, but the craft continued to climb as atmospheric resistance decreased, enabling it to leave Earth's atmosphere 85 seconds after launch and then reach its highest elevation, or apogee, 92 seconds later. At this point, the nose cone separated from the rest of the rocket and deployed a parachute so it could safely reenter the atmosphere and touch down in the desert, where it was collected by the RPL team for analysis.

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