Members of UTEP’s Sun City Rocket Team took The Prospector team behind the scenes to get a closer look at the project they have been working on in preparation for the 2024 Spaceport America Cup. This is the team’s third time participating in the tournament. To help lead the team, Andres Vicario is the team’s project manager and lead engineer, and is in his second year as a team officer.  

“This competition has been definitely a journey for all of our students, the past year we have been researching and developing and now finally constructing these rockets,” Vicario said. “We are all pretty excited to hopefully launch within the next week.”  

UTEP’s rocket team said that they will be progressing from the 10,000-foot category and will make their inaugural entry in the 30,000-foot class.  

“It has definitely been a bit of a challenge; I know for most teams they like to stay within one category. For the last two years, we competed in the 10 K class category and last year we were quite successful in that we were also successful in recovery,” Vicario said. 

As the team prepares to travel to New Mexico to represent UTEP, they will begin to showcase their rocket and talents by competing on Monday, June 17 through Friday, June 21.  

“We have universities from around the globe that will be participating in this, it’s about 150 teams that will be participating this year and 30 plus countries,” Vicario said. 

The event will take place at the Las Cruces Convention Center, tickets for the event are available on the Spaceport America Cup Website (shop.spaceportamerica.com)  

Israel Garcia is the multimedia editor and can be reached at [email protected].