The European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC) is a rocketry competition that has been taking place since 2020 and is aimed at student teams from Europe. The competition takes place annually in Portugal and offers students an opportunity to demonstrate their self build rockets.[1]
The EuRoC was launched in 2020 because the Spaceport America Cup was cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the European Rocketry Challenge, the Portuguese Space Agency (Agência Espacial Portuguesa) aims to promote space technology and cooperation between European universities and research institutions in Europe.
As a competition, the EuRoC involves various challenges in which teams have to design, build and launch rockets. The tasks may vary from year to year, but they are designed to require technical development from the students. Participants not only have to develop a working rocket, but also fulfill certain objectives, such as reaching a certain altitude (3 km or 9 km) and carrying a payload to perform scientific experiments during the flight.
Rockets are built from a variety of materials including wood, aluminium, PA-12 and glass fibre composite.[2]
The first EuRoC competition took place from 21 to 24 October 2020 in Ponte de Sor and had six participating student teams. The participating teams with their respective projects were Space Team Aachen (DE) with CARL, Project EULER (CH), Copenhagen Suborbitals with DanSTAR (DK), Air ESIEA (FR) and TU Wien Space Team (AT) with Hound and STR-10.[3]
Altitude categories of 3000 m and 9000 m were introduced.
19 teams with 400 students from 12 European countries took part in the competition.
25 teams with 600 students took part in the competition.
The competition took place from 10 to 16 October 2023 with 25 teams in Constância.[4]