Silver Medal Also Taken Home By U.S. Team

The U.S. Junior rocketry team won Gold and Silver medals at the recently completed 20th World Championships of Space Modeling.

Organized under the auspices of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), the contest was hosted by the National Aero Club of Bulgaria. The contest was held August 23-30 in Shumen, Bulgaria. Teams from 23 nations competed in the event, including the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain, Germany, and Ukraine.

Fifteen year old Alyssa Stenberg of Minneapolis, MN won a Gold Medal in the Scale Altitude competition. Alyssa's winning model, a 1/5 scale replica of the Aurora Flight Sciences' Space Grant I rocket, was first in the standings for both static judging and for height reached under rocket power.

Alyssa also won both individual and team silver medals in the Rocket Glider event. In this event, Alyssa had to build a radio-controlled model that could ascend under rocket power and then glide down to a precise landing. Alyssa piloted the model on three separate flights, which were then added together to determine a winner. Along with her teammates Zackary Stenberg (10, her younger brother) and Brendan O'Bryan (12, of Brookeville, MD), the U.S. won a Silver medal for team performance.
Stoil Avramov won a Silver medal in the free-flight rocket glider category. Stoil, 13, lives in Columbia, Maryland.

The U.S. Junior team won a special award for "Fair Play" when 17 year old Daniel Kelton of Liberty Hill, Texas voluntarily turned down a Gold medal after realizing that the judges had made a scoring error on his flight. Daniel disclosed the error and pushed to get his score corrected, even though it dropped his team from first to fifth in the event. In 2013, Daniel was part of a team that won first place in the Team America Rocketry Challenge.

The U.S. Team was selected by the National Association of Rocketry (NAR), in concert with the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) and the National Aeronautics Association (NAA). The Junior team was sponsored by the NAR and by Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation. Team Manager of the U.S. Junior Team was Bill Stine, an executive with Utah-based RCS Rocket Motor Components. Eight of the Junior team's twelve members are young women.

"We are extremely proud of the US Junior team," said Aurora CEO John Langford. "These kids are not only the next generation of aerospace leadership; they are the best Ambassadors for America that one could imagine. This is truly STEM education in action."

(Image provided by Aurora Flight Sciences, Alyssa Stenberg, 15, and her U.S. Junior teammate Allison Van Milligan, 14, display Alyssa's 1/5 scale model of the Aurora Flight Sciences Space Grant 1 rocket that won a gold medal in the 2014 Space Model World Championships)

FMI: www.aurora.aero