NASA Student Launch Initiative
Fellow CENJARS members,
As many of you know, Diptanshu and his team, Mach Lightspeed, finish 9th in the ARC National competition in 2025. That position afforded the team a buy into the NASA Student Launch Initiative as one of ten high school teams. For the past nine months, I, your CENJARS Poobah, had been mentoring this team in their quest to compete in the SLI. The launch competition took place in Huntsville, Alabama — home of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center — April 22-26, 2026. For your information, NASA posted a live video of the launch which is available here.
Today, NASA held the Student Launch Initiative award ceremony live via YouTube. I urge you to watch this video. Diptanshu and team Mach Lightspeed did very well for first time participants in this program.
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Diptanshu and Team Mach Lightspeed. I know it was a lot of work, and I'm glad it paid off with 3 awards in the competition.
Also congratulations to Diptanshu's parents, Koushik and Moumita. I know it took a lot of time and effort to support the team and helping them get to suitable fields for test flights, among other efforts. Not to mention "sponsoring" the team's expenses.
Congratulations are also due to Brian as the team's mentor. Brian spent countless hours helping them gather parts and advising the team on building such a high power rocket, and also helping with some of the electronics that went into the project. The perfect man for the job!
3D Printed Payload Award
Uploaded files:
I edited the live stream to include Mach light speed. It’s in the NASA SLI folder