A local rocket team based out of the University of Waterloo is seeing its dreams soar after having broken a world record at a national competition.
The Waterloo Rocketry team attended the 2026 Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins earlier this month, watching as their Polaris rocket climbed to an altitude of 63,497 feet, breaking the previous record for an amateur liquid rocket ever launched by almost 7,000 feet.
“Seeing the rocket launch was an experience that I cannot put into words,” said Niva Patel, a second-year Mechanical Engineering student and future technical lead on the rocketry team.
“The moments before launch were the most stressful of my life, but witnessing Polaris soar into the air, hearing the callout confirming we broke the world record, and watching the parachutes deploy with the entire team cheering was unforgettable.”
Polaris, the liquid bi-propellant-powered, 17-foot-long, 300-pound rocket, is heavily inspired by the team’s previous rocket flown in 2025, which has been heavily upgraded and improved upon.
“It’s last year’s rocket, but better,” said Patel.
“We increased Polaris’s engine thrust to improve the rocket’s initial stability and significantly optimized the vehicle architecture to maximize our altitude. To make absolutely sure we got the vehicle back in one piece, we also heavily reinforced the recovery system, engineering it to withstand ten times the expected deployment forces.”
It comes after Aurora, the rocket used last year, flew to over 38,000 feet, which was the second-highest amateur liquid bi-propellant rocket in the world at the time, but unfortunately was unable to be recovered after its flight.
“Our success is built on years of consistent incremental improvements and carefully reigned-in ambition,” said Luca Scavone, a fourth-year Systems Design Engineering student and Waterloo Rocketry team co-lead.
“Each rocket launch is a testament to our accumulated knowledge and expertise, an invaluable team resource that we share with new members to carry the work forward.”
The team was able to break the record at the 2026 Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins, with Patel saying it held true to its name.
“This is a really hard engineering challenge,” Patel says. “My favourite part is working through it all together as a team and making an impossible challenge possible.”
With the record in hand, the team has said it’s already looking to 2027 and beyond, currently in the midst of preparing for student recruitment, which begins in September.
The team has been in place for 17 years, now at over 100 students total from across various facilities, including Engineering, Math, Arts, and Science.
Further details on the Waterloo Rocketry Team can be found on the University of Waterloo’s website.
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