Dr Alistair John from the University of Sheffield visited Dr Peter Johnson at Imperial College in late 2024.

The aim of the visit was to share knowledge on undergraduate student rocketry and practical engineering education.

Alistair and Peter met for a tour of Imperial and visited the rocket and fluid mechanics labs, and then met to discuss future collaboration and alignment of activities.

There was fruitful discussion around the best way to use lab based practical education to embed knowledge and improve student learning, with Peter demonstrating equipment he developed to teach fundamental fluid mechanics principles.

A visit to the Imperial rocket lab gave an opportunity to see the students’ Nimbus rocket.

Nimbus was a rocket developed by Imperial College London Rocketry (ICLR) to compete in the Liquid (3 km) category at the 2023 edition of the European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC). It features THANOS, an ablatively-cooled liquid bipropellant engine using methanol and nitrous oxide; and the Ricardo Avionics Ecosystem (RAE), a fully modular and distributed avionics system which provides Telemetry, Tracking, and Control (TT&C). Unfortunately, Nimbus was unable to be launched at EuRoC 2023. Nevertheless, the following year, an upgraded version of the rocket, Nimbus 24, now with the regeneratively-cooled THANOS-R engine using ethanol, launched successfully at EuRoC, reaching an apogee of over 2.5 km.

And chance to see the vacuum chambers used for electric propulsion testing.

Alistair runs the Race 2 Space initiative, and he was keen to discuss this with Peter, who is the supervisor of the Imperial College London rocketry team.

Outcomes:

Alistair provided guidance to Peter on what projects the rocket team could work on going forward, and how to set sensible objectives with long term goals to work towards.

Peter expressed his interest to support the Race 2 Space initiative and agreed to investigate the possibility of undergraduate student access to Imperial’s vacuum chambers for electric propulsion.