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The Oregon State University Rocketry Club is never going to forget the summer of 2016.

Two weeks ago, the OSU American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics club took home the top prize in the 10th annual ESRA Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition in Green River, Utah – the biggest college rocket competition in the world. In 2014, they beat out 40-plus teams to win first place in the basic category at the IREC. Nancy Squires, OSU AIAA senior instructor, said the club's recent success is a major feat for a club that just three years ago didn’t exist.

“Our first rocketry project wasn’t even built in the lab,” she said. “We were fixing it in a garage and doing testing out in my horse pasture. We just didn’t have a space. It wasn’t until after the team won its first competition (in 2014) that we got a lab.”

On Saturday, members of the team packed up the award-winning rocket at its lab on the first floor of Rogers Hall and prepped a first-time experimental prototype rocket for a launch today in Brothers. While there are always nerves prior to a new launch, many team members couldn’t hold back smiles Saturday. Not just because they were part of a major victory for the team, but because thanks to the team’s success, OSU administration is set to introduce a new aerospace engineering minor this fall.