The Launch Canada competition brings students from across Canada together to design, build and launch high-powered rockets. The event is being held at a launch site in Mattagami First Nation and comes as Canada looks to expand its domestic space-launch capabilities. “Last November, rockets and launches were almost explicitly something we did not do here. That was the big gap in our space industry. But that all changed,” said Adam Trumpour, founder and CEO of Launch Canada. That momentum continued this week when Defence Research and Development Canada announced $1.2 million through its Ideas program to support Launch Canada in developing a national training program for space launch. The funding was announced during the Launch Canada conference on Saturday. Team Gaul students from Laval University said the competition offers more than the chance to send a rocket into the sky. “It opens a lot of opportunities in various fields, mostly like aerospace,” said Laval University student Victor Deschenes. “But it also gives engineering students some hands-on experience that is very valuable for … any engineering job.” And after putting months of work into their rocket, getting it off the launch pad was a major highlight for the Laval team. “So everybody was really happy to see it finally fly. And it was a really good flight. Really nominal. Perfect parachute deployment,” said Laval University student Loic Gauthier-Heintz. Launch Canada has held the competition in the Timmins area for the past four years. The organization now hopes to make the site a permanent fixture not only for its own programming, but as a hub for aerospace testing, education, and collaboration.
