UWaterloo students break amateur world record with liquid rocket launch

By August 24, 2026
A tall, thin student rocket with dust at its base, just as it lifts off.
Amateur rocket soared past 63,000 feet at Launch Canada Challenge.

A group of students at the University of Waterloo broke a world record for their amateur liquid rocket launch.

The news: At the 2026 Launch Canada Challenge in Timmins, Ont. last week, the University of Waterloo Rocketry Team—which has roughly 100 student members—successfully launched its liquid bi-propellant rocket Polaris to an altitude of 63,497 feet, surpassing the previous amateur world record of 56,590 feet. 

This type of rocket, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9, uses both fuel and oxidizer in separate tanks to create combustion. That’s different, and typically more complex, than a solid-fuel rocket engine, which has a solid core of both fuel and oxidizer (like the Space Shuttle’s boosters). 

From the source: “The moments before launch were the most stressful of my life, but witnessing Polaris soar into the air, hearing the callout confirming we broke the world record, and watching the parachutes deploy with the entire team cheering was unforgettable,” second-year mechanical engineering student Niva Patel, who is part of the rocketry team, told Waterloo News.

The context: The Launch Canada Challenge is the country’s largest student rocketry competition, where teams from different post-secondary institutions compete to launch rockets as high as they can. In 2024, the UWaterloo team was the first to launch a liquid bi-propellant rocket into the skies in Canada, according to the university.

Last year, Polytechnique MontrĂ©al beat UWaterloo in the advanced launch challenge category. 

According to the UWaterloo news article, its rocket made it to 38,000 feet, but the flight data was lost. This year, however, the rocket descended without a hitch, allowing the students to analyze data from the rocket’s sensors.

Final thought: The competition comes as Canada is trying to build up sovereign space launch capacity. Right now, it is the only country in the G7 without it. Startups such as NordSpace and Canada Rocket Company are working to build light and medium-lift vehicles to serve a domestic base of companies that make space satellites. Student rocketry teams from UWaterloo and other competitors at Launch Canada likely serve as a local talent pool for these companies as more investment flows into the industry.

Feature image courtesy University of Waterloo.

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