A 19-student team from Iowa State called the Cyclone Student Launch Initiative (CySLI) spent the past two semesters preparing and better part of last week competing in a 15th annual competition put on by NASA. The competition was developed to encourage students across the country to help make advances in aerospace engineering, increasingly with the goal of making technologies applicable to the study of planet Mars.

The rocket built by CySLI did well, reaching the third best altitude despite some mechanical malfunctions.

The rocket looked pretty swanky too, and the team received an award for having the best looking one at the competition.

To read more about the challenge itself, see the links below from NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/homecoming-for-nasa-student-launch/

http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challenges/mav.html