Waterloo Rocketry’s Polaris reaches 63,497 feet and sets an amateur liquid-rocket record

Waterloo Rocketry’s rocket Polaris flew to 63,497 feet on Thursday, August 20, at Launch Canada in Timmins, Ontario, the country’s largest student rocketry challenge. That set a record for the greatest height reached by an amateur liquid rocket. The previous mark was 56,590 feet, held by a US team with its rocket Vespula.

The team says it was the first nominal flight of a liquid rocket in Canada, and its first successful recovery ever. Polaris is its third liquid-fuelled rocket after Borealis in 2024 and Aurora in 2025, and the biggest so far at 213 inches tall and eight inches wide. A drogue parachute and then a main parachute brought it down safely.

Last year Aurora’s parachute failed and the rocket was lost in the Northern Ontario forest. This year wireless problems between mission control and the rocket, bad weather and a fueling tube failure delayed the launch to the fourth of the event’s five days. Media lead Niva Patel, a second-year mechanical engineering student, called it “our most successful flight ever.”