UNC Charlotte’s 49er Rocketry team successfully launched a sub-scale rocket, exceeding altitude goals and qualifying for NASA’s 2026 Student Launch Competition while gaining critical design insights.

The Space Age framed nuclear propulsion as a quiet rethinking of movement, distance, and endurance beyond Earth.

Standing no more than about 70 feet tall, sounding rockets are much smaller than an average spacecraft that may launch on an orbital flight from major spaceports For comparison, SpaceX's famous two-stage Falcon 9 rocket – one of the world's most active ...

NASA elected to grab key components from the Redstone and Jupiter rockets, combining multiple fuel tank designs together to feed an octet of Rocketdyne motors. Named Saturn, the first version of the enormous Franken-rocket flew in 1961, with the Saturn II following in 1966.