SOAR rises to the occasion by developing rockets for the 2026 International Rocket Launch Competition
By Hannah Caparino, September 30 2025—
The Schulich School of Engineering is home to the design students who are part of Student Organization for Aerospace Research (SOAR). The design team has continued to allow students to design and build rockets that would be entered in competitions. The captain of the SOAR team, Andrew Cyprian Gonsalves sat down with the Gauntlet to discuss SOAR and future goals.
“SOAR is a student design team under Schulich. We primarily build rockets for competitions. So we attend two competitions, one is called Launch Canada, over in Timmins, Ontario. That’s mostly Canadian universities that operate, and the other, more prestigious, bigger competition is the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) and they have roughly 170 teams from all over the world that come to compete,” said Gonsalves.
In terms of membership, SOAR aims to welcome all undergraduate students who have an interest in astrophysics and rocketry. Aside from engineering students, arts students can be involved through providing administrative aid or helping in the manufacturing of the rockets.
Gonsalves provides the example of how SOAR always needs help regarding business and financial aid, or how students can help with the technical developments and building aspect. He does emphasize that engineering students can find community and experience through their involvement with SOAR, as the club utilizes the knowledge of all engineering disciplines. Graduate students can also get involved with the club through serving as mentors for the development and will advise the students through the submission process.
“Because we’re more engineering focused, our primary membership is mostly engineering students, so we have mechanical, chemical, software, electrical engineers and engineering physics as well. But you also have people from biomed, astrophysics, so it really depends on what your interests are,” said Gonsalves.
SOAR is currently working on two rockets with the aim to present one to IREC in 2026. The primary goal for their rocket is to launch at a height of 100,000 feet, with their current rocket acting as a smaller version to test prior to the IREC competition.
“We’re currently working on two rockets. Our main goal is on a two-year design cycle. So it’s called Athena, and we’re aiming for it to be a 100,000-foot hybrid, so 100,000 feet is our apogee for targeting,” said Gonsalves. “But in order to develop that we’re planning to build a smaller rocket, which will go up to 10,000 feet, and they’ll have more of the concepts that we plan to implement on the Athena.”
The club is currently hiring for the 2025-2026 school year, and membership will continue with second and third-year students to retain the knowledge learnt from prior research and practice. The club will continue to represent the U of C at the launch competitions with the support of members and spectators, and will keep on breaking knowledge barriers in astrophysics.