At the end of 2017, the Noosphere Engineering School, one of the projects of Max Polyakov, held an innovative tournament in space design — Star Track. The event was held with the support of Oles Honchar Dnipro National University and allowed young enthusiasts to not just share their ideas, but also compete for a cash prize to help implement their project.
Space Tournament
Teams and individual participants could submit their projects in:
- CanSat — a project of a vehicle for the launch and deployment of CanSat satellites
- Research missile system — a project of a carrier rocket for investigation of the upper layers of the atmosphere
- Freestyle — original ideas and new functionality without any limitations on project parameters
The initiation of Max Polyakov, co-founder of Association Noosphere, to hold the tournament was aimed at attracting the attention of the younger generation into suborbital rockets, which may soon occupy key positions in the space industry.
Image credit: Noosphere Engineering School via Facebook
About 30 participants presented their projects, the best of which were recognized:
- UniversalRocket. A project, whose goal is to explore the best ways to create launch pads, payload systems, and missiles for the launch of CanSats.
- DniproSkyLAB. The team presented a project of a launch vehicle for launching 4 CanSats to a height of 6 km. A feature of the design was the use of CFRP and GRP three-layer structures to reduce production costs and the dry weight of the hull.
- CLASNARocket. Project of a single-stage meteorological research rocket with a dual-mode engine.
- RocchettaSpaceVehicle. Another project to create a research rocket system, but with a hybrid rocket engine.
- Dron-Hunter. A design of an unmanned device to defend national borders won in the Free Style category.
Noosphere Engineering School, on behalf of Max Polyakov awarded the winners of the tournament with 5000 UAH cash checks and the chance to implement their projects.
Other Noosphere’s initiatives
The Star Track Tournament is not the first event of its kind by Noosphere. In 2016, Max Polyakov initiated an innovative tournament dedicated to the improvement of educational institutions in the country. The tournament winners received full support from Association Noosphere for the implementation of their PowerBox project, a service for charging and storing mobile devices. At this moment the device already facilitates for students of the Dnipropetrovsk National University of Rail Transportation.
In April 2017, Association Noosphere acted as a partner of the International Space hackathon NASA Space Apps Challenge in Kiev, Dnipro and Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine. Employees of the EOS (Earth Observing System), a company created by Max Polyakov, took part as mentors and experts in the competition, sharing their knowledge with the participants and helping with valuable advice. The success of the Spacer team and their Diversity project, the latter of which was included in the top-10 of the Global rankings in the People’s Choice award, inspired Polyakov to support the hackathon in 2018.
Conducting such events significantly affects the development of the technological environment in Ukraine. The goal of Max Polyakov is to motivate students to study space and rocket technologies in order to revive the Ukrainian aerospace industry. This gives hope that many interesting engineering and technological events for students await us all.
Image credit: Noosphere Engineering School via Facebook
