If you've been listening to T-minus since we started, then you know that we are big fans of student rocket competitions. We've been at the Spaceport America Cup, which is now known as the International Rocket Engineering Competition, for the last three summers. But there are other student launch opportunities around the globe, of course. So for today's show, let's head over to Portugal to find out more about UROC, also known as the European Rocket Tree Challenge. This is T-minus Deep Space. I'm Maria Varmazis. My guest today is Marta Gonzalves, Science and Education Officer at the Portuguese Space Agency. My name is Marta Gonzalves. I work at the Portuguese Space Agency, where I am responsible for the education program as a whole. I also follow Portuguese contributions to science missions, namely in ISA, European Space Agency, and also other science organizations related to space. My background, I am an aerospace engineer, but I also always cared a lot about how actually space can be more involved in society. So I do love the engineering part, but I always looked a little bit further, other than that. And so, yeah, that's how I ended up in the Portuguese Space Agency, and responsible for the education program, in which UROC is a big part of it, not only European Rocket Tree Challenge, we do have other initiatives. But UROC is a big flagship program for the Portuguese Space Agency. Thank you, Marta, for joining me today. And indeed, what I wanted to talk to you today about and learn a lot more about was UROC. We do love student rocket re competitions on T minus a great deal. And I was mentioning to you before we started talking that UROC is one that I've been watching for some time with great personal interest. And I think it is beyond time for us to tell our audience more about UROC. I know many of our listeners are in Europe, so many of them probably know. But if you wouldn't mind giving me just a let's start with an introduction to UROC and a little bit about its history, what it is and what it's been and where it's going, that kind of a thing. Okay, perfect. So the European Rocket Tree Challenge is a competition that, well, it is a rocket re competition for university students, for European university students, actually. And it just challenges students to build their own rocket and then gives them an opportunity to come to Portugal and launch their rocket if they can. If everything goes all right. It started back in 2020, so we are now in the sixth edition. And at the time it was really an opportunity that came to us and that we took. So it was a time of the pandemic, of course. And in the United States there's a similar competition, the Space Port America Cup. At the time they canceled the competition and there was an European team that really was looking forward to launch their rocket. I think it was the last opportunity they had to do it because then they would leave university and they somehow ended up in discussions with the Portuguese Space Agency. And in a matter of months we decided to take up this challenge and to organize the competition in about three or four months. That was a big challenge because we were still trying to figure out how it would look like. But I think we just really challenged ourselves as well. And then what I can see now is that it looked so much different from what it looks now. So in the first edition we had around 100 students. And right now we are looking at 700 students coming to Portugal. A much more professional competition, very well-defined partners that help us make this competition happen. And a much more well-structured composition and teams, especially in obviously for the evaluation of the rockets and then the operation of the rockets. So teams can apply to launch their rockets up to 3K or 9 km height. So this is their decision fully. And they can choose how complex their rocket is. So they can choose whether they do a solid propulsion rocket hybrid liquid. And of course if they buy a solid motor or if they do it themselves. And so really it's up to them. In the last few years we had, we accepted around 25 teams. For this year we decided to challenge ourselves a bit more. So we decided to select 28 teams this year. Not all 28 reach the competition because things happen and they have to develop their own rocket. They have to test their own rocket. And sometimes things go well, not so well in those phases. But I would say that right now we are looking at the bigger number of teams we have ever had. And so hopefully this will be a very exciting competition this year that will happen from the 9th to the 15th of October. It's a wonderful thing to have so much interest and incredible talent coming through your competition. And to need more teams to join means there must be many more that are trying to get in. It must be record interest every year. Yeah, absolutely. That's exactly what we have noticed. So I think we've had around 60 applications this year. It has been increasing from the last few years, which is also for us a sign of the success of the competition. Also what we have noticed is that, and we had the opportunity to visit the Space for America Cup last year, me and the colleague I managed the project with. And we have noticed that European teams are coming more and more to EROC. Obviously also because it's closer, I would say. Imagine it's easier to not have to ship everything. It's cheaper, right? Yeah, yep. And that is all very important when it comes to European, to university teams. And especially for Portuguese teams, for us it's a big success having these year four teams preparing to compete in the European Rocket League Challenge, which is a record number of Portuguese teams. In the first year we had none, actually. And then we started to have one team with an OK project. It was their first project. And then we started to notice really a big development and a big evolution. And then more teams started to appear. Now we had four teams selected, but we know of many more that are trying to compete as well and trying to apply. I think that this is one of our main goals. Obviously this competition is European and it's to contribute for the European ecosystem, mainly. But we have to recognize that we are in Portugal. We are the Portuguese Space Agency and this try for Portuguese students to have these types of opportunities. And so we are so happy to see them have the ambition and challenge themselves to come to build the rocket and to try to launch. But also this competition is for all. But for them, I think it's especially interesting to come, even sometimes if they don't launch or if they don't participate, but even to come and visit and talk to other students from other countries that have much more experience or they just do things differently and try to connect and try to talk and try to learn. So they can also evolve their projects and set their ambitions higher. We'll be right back. Yes, and I was, as you're mentioning that I can imagine these are also their future colleagues and coworkers. I can only begin to imagine, given coming up on the sixth year of the competition, you must have seen now students who've gone on to even higher education and/or working in the European space ecosystem now. And maybe people have come back and said, hey, I am now working in that field and I'm back to maybe mentor or just to cheer on, I would imagine. Absolutely. And that's also what we've seen. We've had some students that go on to their professional lives. They do join actually great companies from the European space ecosystem and they come back and they say that obviously Europe was a great experience. They sometimes try and they say they are open to work with us, which is obviously also a really great experience. They mentor their teams. Usually they go back to their teams, which is I think it's natural as well. But I do see also the other way around, which is also companies are looking at the competition and recognizing the value in it and that they can find talent in the participants that want to build the rocket to challenge themselves to learn from a bigger project. And so I think it works both ways. So students actually go and look for companies and these baggage they have, it brings them leverage to work in these companies. But companies also come to the competition and look for students that can develop these hard and soft skills from the experience they have there. Absolutely. Yes, I was noticing on the sponsor list some incredible names on there. So yes, that makes a lot of sense and especially in this moment of a lot of geopolitical change, there is so much more emphasis on European space sovereignty. And I imagine that is also something that is really driving a lot of participants and sponsors and just general interest in the competition. Absolutely. I think space now, we talk about space more than ever. It's been like this for some years. I also think, you know, I think the Portuguese Space Agency was created a little bit also on that wave, on the new space wave. And what we try and do, and I think we are lucky to have a such young team within the agency is try and bring, you know, innovative projects and, you know, a fresh thought to what we all do. Yes. And I have to ask, because I'm always curious, if you have any favorite stories from the competitions that you've seen over the years, I imagine it may be hard to choose some favorites. But anything you want to highlight as an anecdote? I think, you know, I think my, usually my favorite stories are of teams that help each other. So I think this, we call it a competition, but we feel such a cooperative spirit in the competition that it doesn't really feel like teams are competing. And I remember this team, I think, I don't remember the names, but I remember, I think this was such a small team. They had like six students. So we allow for 30 students to come. Sometimes teams have hundreds of students participating in them. But this team had only like five or six students. They had big trouble getting the rock, just trying to get the rocket up to Portugal and to the paddock. And then they just, you know, time was scarce. And they had troubles, they had trouble to, to finalize the rocket. And I remember just a team that was, that was much bigger. They had so much experience. They, I remember all of them in the, together with the smaller team, just working on their rocket, trying to figure out all the problems. And in the end, you know, this team was able to launch because other colleagues that were competing actually helped them solve all their issues. And for me, I think this is the best spirit. And you can really feel it in the competition. Like everyone helps each other. And it's, it's, it's just nice to interact with all of them and just to feel the spirit they bring to, you know, to, to both the paddock, the launch site and just in general. That is wonderful. I love those kinds of stories. Thank you for sharing that. And as you're mentioning the, the actual site, I figure I should ask, what is the site like? The geography of this competition. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, I think that's a very important question. So we do it in the middle of Portugal, Alto Lentejo, and in the municipality of Constancia. This has been a municipality that has opened their arms to, to receive us. It's a small town. So bringing in 700 people. It's a big increase in population in just a week. So people really have to prepare. But also one of the main characteristics is that in the municipality, there is a military camp where they have a shooting range. And if you know about shooting ranges, it's just a big, wide area and occupied, which brings us to safety measures and the safety concept we have. And this area is perfect for us, right? In the middle of Portugal, we are able to launch rockets with, obviously there's always some type of risk, but with minimal risk, at least as minimal as possible. And we do it with the help of the army. So they not only allow us to do it there, that's, it's, it's, it's their military camp, but they also help us in operations. So they help us do the recovery of the rockets, especially because they are the ones who know the terrain so well. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you telling me about that. So the, the competition is coming up very, very soon. So for, for anyone who's interested, obviously this year, it's too late, but for next year, for, for anyone listening who's maybe hasn't heard of it. Any, what is the timeline look like for the upcoming, not the one next week, but afterwards? Okay. So in terms of the competition, it usually always happens in, let's say in mid-October, at least on the first, fortnight of October. And then leading up to it, we usually open applications around between February and March. There's around a month to apply. So teams are usually prepared to apply as well. We have just an evaluation period. We tell the teams if they were accepted or not. And then when it comes to the middle of the year, there are some reviews that, that happen. So we try and understand the concept of the projects and try to understand from the get go if there is any issue that we can identify. And that can be mitigated for us. This is important. And then sometimes there's a second review just to understand how things are going. Finally, you know, around a month before the competition, teams need to deliver their technical reports. And then we meet, we meet all the teams in, in October. They, even in the competition, they have to, to get their approval in the flight readiness review, which gets them approved to go to the launch site. And then at the launch site, they need to get approved in the launch readiness review, which gets them approved to go to the launch rail. And then we hear the countdown. And if everything goes okay, we see a rocket launch. That is always such a tense moment. And hopefully all goes well. And sometimes we hear three to one and we see nothing launching. But, you know, if they get a second try, you know, things go, usually go, oh, okay. Yeah, so much to learn, even from things not going to plan. Absolutely. It's quite amazing the persistence and tenacity of all these student teams with all the work they put into these, these competitions. It's amazing. Marta, is there anything that you are specifically looking forward to this year? I mean, this is maybe an odd question, but any trends you're seeing over time of what students are attempting that maybe is surprising or delightful or anything like that? No, absolutely. Yes, we see actually the complexity of the rockets increasing every year, which for us is also a challenge. But it's incredible how the teams are more ambitious in their projects. So I remember in the first few years, we had many solid rockets. And now mostly we have hybrid and liquid rockets, which are much more complex. But, you know, much more fun when it works. And I think it also connects to the point which is obviously it's a great success to see a rocket launch. But I think for me as well, the big highlight is just seeing the reaction of the teams. The teams are so, so, so happy to see, you know, all their hard work and effort for a year, sometimes even more coming to fruition, right? And there, you know, you see them laugh, you see them cry of happiness, and it just makes it all worth it. You know, we do have a lot of work preparing this competition, but just seeing also how much it means to them and to the work they developed, it makes it worth it. That's wonderful. Marta, I know you have a ton of work right now. So is there anything else that you want to leave the audience with? Anything else you want to say at all? I would just invite everyone who's interested to visit us. We do have tickets. These are free tickets. You just have to register because it's a military camp and for safety reasons, we do have, you know, a limited capacity. But I would like to invite everyone to, you know, go to the Euroak website to explore the competition, to send us an email and just to visit us if they can. 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