Undergraduate Mechanical and Space Engineering students at UQ have the opportunity to test their space engineering skills in final-year design projects. The students design and launch payloads for rockets from the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia.  The Australian Space Research Institute (ASRI) manage the launches.  They have access to a number of Zuni rocket motors that are used to launch the payloads. These boosters can accelerate the payload to Mach 2 at the end of burnout of the solid rocket boosters.  Recent payloads have included ramjet engines, pulsed detination engines and fundamental studies into the nature of boundary layer transition from laminar to turbulent flow at supersonic speeds. 

Here are some photographs from the October 2005 Launch Campaign:

4th-year Mechanical and Space Engineering students John Reddel and Prashant Mistri with their wagtail/transition experiment at Woomera in October 2005.