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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

EWU rocket soars to 3rd place in competition

Eastern Washington University student Spencer Scott, right, practices tucking the collapsible airplane built by Riverpoint Academy students into the nose cone of the large rocket built recently at EWU.
A 10-foot rocket built by Eastern Washington University students soared to 10,676 feet at a recent competition in Utah, landing the team in third place behind teams from MIT and ITA Brazil. The rocket, which was built by about 25 students in EWU’s rocketry club, carried a plane designed and built by students of Mead School District’s Riverpoint Academy, an alternative high school that focuses on STEM fields. “Not only did we do well, but we did so on a very limited budget of about $12,000 compared to budgets of over $50,000 for some schools,” Professor Marty Weiser, the EWU team’s faculty adviser, said in a news release. More than 50 teams participated in the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition near Green River, Utah, which is hosted annually by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association.