News/Events

Six college/university rocket teams, coached through a high-power rocket build using video-delivered lessons from the MnSGC at the U of MN – Twin Cities, launched their dual-deploy kit-rockets at the Tripoli MN launch field near North Branch on Nov. 10, 2018. This fall’s teams are from Bethel University, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Paul College, University […]

Members of the U of MN (extracurricular) Rocket Team, many of whom got their start in rocketry through MN Space Grant freshman seminars, won the Alka-Rocket challenge at the Houston Space Center on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017. Their rocket, powered by gas produced by alka-seltzer tablets dissolved in water, soared over 400 feet – establishing […]

The High Altitude Student Platform (HASP) is a NASA sponsored program supported by the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium and NASA’s Balloon Program Office which allows 12-13 groups of students to build and test payloads on a scientific balloon flight for several hours at a time. The University of Minnesota has flown on HASP once a […]

The MnSGC and Tripoli MN, a local high-power rocket club, are pleased to announce the 2018-2019 Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocket Competition which will be held on May 18 & 19, 2019. In this competition college student teams are challenged to design, build, and fly a high-power rocket which can go supersonic, but do so […]

The MnSGC is helping sponsor a visit of Colonel Pamela Melroy, USAF Ret. and former NASA Astronaut, to the U of MN at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, April 30, 2018. This event is free, but pre-registration is required. For more details and a link to the registration website, go to http://www.aem.umn.edu/info/spotlight/Melroy_Lecture.shtml.

In the fall of 2017 a team of physics majors at Macalester College, along with physics professor Tonnis ter Veldhuis, established a high-power rocketry team. They took “video lessons” offered by MnSGC’s James Flaten and (student) Danny Toth at the U of MN – Twin Cities and built a dual-deploy high-power rocket (pictured) which they […]

Fourteen freshmen from the College of Science and Engineering at the U of MN – Twin Cities got their first taste of (stratospheric) spaceflight on Sunday, Oct. 29, 2017, when their science payloads were carried to 100,000 feet on two weather balloons. The MN Space Grant promotes student interest in spacecraft-building and spaceflight by regularly […]

On August 21, 2017, the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities’ Stratospheric Ballooning Team participated in a nation-wide effort by over 50 colleges and universities to live stream a solar eclipse from the balloon-borne video cameras in the stratosphere. The team launched five high-altitude balloon stacks from Kenesaw, NE, and set up ground stations in […]

The University of Minnesota – Twin Cities’ Stratospheric Ballooning Team participated in an eclipse exhibit at the U of M’s Physics and Nanotechnology Building in conjunction with the Bell Museum of Natural History on Sunday, August 13. The event was hosted in an effort to educate the general public on the much-anticipated solar eclipse that […]

On November 7, 2017, former astronaut Daniel Brandenstein visited the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities to award Astronaut Scholarships to two undergraduate students, Merrick Pierson Smela and Rahul Parhi. The scholarship was created in 1985 by the Mercury 7 astronauts to encourage the study of science and engineering. These scholarships are awarded to students […]