Amateur-built rocket breaks altitude records.
A team of nine students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida has broken three world records with their student-built rocket, Deneb. The rocket reached a height of 46,000 feet, making it the highest undergraduate and collegiate amateur liquid rocket launch in the US and breaking the amateur rocketry record. The team spent 4,000 hours over the past year designing, building, and testing Deneb. The rocket is the successor to Altair, which blew up when the team tried to launch it in October 2022. Several graduating students from the team have landed full-time jobs at SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Firefly Aerospace.