May 13—MANCHESTER — Two teams of local youths are headed to Virginia to compete in the American Rocketry Challenge on Saturday.

The two teams — the Secret Agent Pumas and the Purple Dragons — recently completed mock trials indoors at the First Baptist Church of Manchester, even seeking to recreate forecasted weather conditions with light rain and chilly temperatures.

John St. Jacques, the teams' mentor, played the part of rain cloud, using a spray bottle to mist unsuspecting students as they ran through the trial.

"I kept spritzing them until they realized they needed to protect the equipment," St. Jacques, a retired mechanical engineer, said.

During their trial, members of the Secret Agent Pumas failed to discover the plastic bag that St. Jacques had strategically stashed inside the team's toolbox. Instead, one student sacrificed his hoodie and used it to shield the rocket from getting wet.

While the exercise served as entertainment for dry onlookers, it was also educational for the Secret Agent Pumas, team manager Abigail Koval said. Now they know to use a "rocket poncho" if it rains during the actual competition, she said.

"No matter how many times we do it, I think we always get something out of it and learn from it," Koval said. "By doing this, we know exactly that if it does rain, we need to protect this rocket with our lives so it does not get wet."

The Secret Agent Pumas and the Purple Dragons were among the top 100 teams to qualify for the 20th annual national rocketry competition.

The teams are made up of middle and high school students from Andover, Bolton, Vernon, East Hartford, Glastonbury, and Manchester. They are organized through the First Baptist Church of Manchester's youth group, but membership is open to any student from sixth through 12th grades.

This is the church's eighth trip to the finals.

In the first round of the competition, the teams have to launch a rocket that safely carries two raw eggs to a target altitude of either 860 feet or 810 feet before having it parachute back to the ground. The entire launch will be timed, and the team's goal is to have the eggs back on the earth within a certain time range.

If the teams qualify for the second round of the competition, the height requirement will either be increased or decreased by 50 feet. The flight duration will also be adjusted.

All of the practice launches have been at the Durham Fairgrounds — the only place in the state where rocketry teams are allowed to launch.

But last weekend's inclement forecast presented the teams with a unique opportunity to learn how to adapt on the fly. That experience may prove useful given the ominous weather forecasted on the day of the competition, St. Jacques said.

"It looks like we're going to have rain and possibly thunderstorms (Saturday)," St. Jacques said. "It gave them a very practical example of why they needed to be prepared for rain."

Precision rocket flying is some of the hardest model rocket flying in the world, St. Jacques said. For months, students have worked diligently to conduct test flights and collect as much data as possible, which gets organized into flight charts.

The flight charts will help instruct students how to modify their rocket given the weather conditions. And while flight charts may account for rain, they don't consider other variables, such as the importance of keeping the rocket dry before its launch.

"If it's raining, the ignitor gets wet, and (the rocket) won't fly," Purple Dragons team manager Taylor Michaud said. "We have to make sure that stays dry."

Michaud, a senior at Bolton High School, and Koval, a senior at Connecticut International Baccalaureate Academy in East Hartford, were both freshman members of the last team that the church sent to the finals in 2019. The pair of best friends will both be attending the University of Connecticut in the fall — Michaud for actuarial science, and Koval for biomedical engineering.

The two team managers said that being sprayed with water was a useful — albeit slightly annoying — activity that helped prepare them for the upcoming competition. The lesson, St. Jacques hopes, is that students learn to deal with whatever Mother Nature throws at them.

"Being able to adapt to the weather — even though it might not be to the actual science and the crunching of numbers — I think as long as we have that background information, we have the knowledge to be able to make the best educated guess for the competition," Koval said. "If this scenario were to happen, we'll take it head on."

Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago, burying Pompeii in volcanic ash. Researchers are now getting a clearer picture of ancient Roman life.

It's Friday and the world is falling apart, so let's just take a short mental health break with some interesting news out of the field of archaeology, where tech is enabling some fascinating new discoveries. A new lidar-powered analysis of land in the Amazon basin has provided evidence of a previously unknown urban center of "mind blowing" complexity. To be clear, that doesn't mean ancient aliens or long-lost technology, just that it far exceeds the expected levels of organization and population that scholars considered possible for Amazonians of 1,500 years ago.

Most elliptical galaxies can usually be found within galaxy clusters. However, a new picture of galaxy NGC 474 captured by Hubble shows an interesting image. Instead of being surrounded by galaxy clusters, NGC 474 is in relatively empty space. Further, the galaxy is surrounded by shells. NASA says could be the result of NGC 474 … The post Hubble telescope discovered a new galaxy with mysterious surroundings appeared first on BGR.

Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city filled with palaces, pyramids and plazas on a construction site of what will become an industrial park near Merida, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The site, called Xiol, has features of the Mayan Puuc style of architecture, archaeologists said, which is common in the southern Yucatan Peninsula but rare near Merida. "We think more than 4,000 people lived around here," said Carlos Peraza, one of the archaeologists who led the excavation of the city, estimated to have been occupied from 600-900 A.D.

NASA’s James Webb space telescope is almost ready to get to work. The telescope’s mirrors are perfectly aligned. The team is currently finishing up the final calibrations of the spacecraft’s various instruments. Once that is done, Webb will be ready to get to work. One of the first things NASA plans to do with it … The post James Webb telescope will soon study two Super-Earths in the Milky Way appeared first on BGR.

Chinese scientists discovered a primitive forest in a giant sinkhole earlier this month. The sinkhole is 630 feet deep, and a team of spelunkers rappelled down into it in early May. While exploring, they found three separate cave entrances and a growing forest. Thankfully, the unique environment has been captured on video. Scientists found a … The post Scientists uncovered an entire forest hidden inside a sinkhole in China appeared first on BGR.

Future Blue Origin astronaut Katya Echazarreta said colleagues and students told they didn't want to work with her because of what she looked like.

“The sand tiger sharks are somewhat unusual for sharks in that they can hover or seem to rest.”

Sky watchers could be in for a memorable spectacle Monday night and early Tuesday thanks to a meteor shower with thousands of shooting stars per hour.

NASA's Space Launch System moon rocket is set for another rollout at Kennedy Space Center after previous attempts to load fuel were cut short.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new image of, NGC 474, an elliptical galaxy that's 2.5 times larger than our Milky Way.

Launch Complex 16, the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station pad operated by Relativity Space, is ready to for its first Terran 1 rocket from California.

How do you keep moondust from gumming up the works in NASA’s future spacesuits and spacecraft? That’s one of the issues addressed in the latest batch of projects backed by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. “NASA is working on ambitious, groundbreaking missions that require innovative solutions from a variety of sources – especially our small businesses,” NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said Thursday in a news release. “Small businesses have the creative edge and expertise n

With the new "Jurassic World Dominion" movie opening June 10, it's time to brush up on your dinosaurs. Here's what you need to know. (Don't worry, no spoilers.)

ProFound Therapeutics says some of these new proteins could lead to treatments for cancer, immune disorders and genetic diseases.

No Man's Sky is an action and exploration game set in an infinite procedurally generated galaxy. Every player starts with a basic spaceship on their own unique planet on its outer edge, with the goal of travelling to its center. Entirely free to set course for any distant mountain peak or star in the sky, players will discover countless never before seen wonders, on worlds never before visited, all generated by No Man’s Sky’s procedural engine. Exploring a dangerous frontier, they’ll face fe

In 1969, humanity succeeded in populating a second world, however briefly, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set down on the surface of the Moon. Six crewed missions followed, each delivering two astronauts to the lunar surface before humanity departed for the last time. That is, at least until the Artemis missions send us back. Getting back to the Moon appears to be a necessary starting point for our greater ambitions, exploring and potentially permanently populating other worlds in our syste

Kelly, who faces re-election this year, discussed his work on the NASA Authorization Act that would allow more missions to the moon and to Mars.

The smallest ever remote controlled walking robot has been designed by engineers at Northwestern University. It's the size of a flea and looks like a miniature crab.

Students at Tarwater Elementary School, along with Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, made the call to space. The goal was to inspire students and increase interests in space, technology, engineering and math subjects. FOX 10's Bailey Miller reports.