WUT students win award in the Student Aerospace Challenge
Ignition of the hypergolic fuel-oxidizer mixture during lab testing
The OrbitWUT team, composed of students from Warsaw University of Technology, received the prestigious ArianeGroup Award in the Student Aerospace Challenge 2024/25. The competition, organized by the Astronaut Club Européen in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), ArianeGroup, and Dassault Aviation, brought together teams from leading technical universities across Europe.
The goal of the challenge was to develop a project related to space or suborbital flight. The competition ran from November 2024 to June 2025, attracting 37 student teams from across the continent. The submitted projects addressed a wide range of topics, including mission planning, engineering systems, and space medicine.
The OrbitWUT team consisted of Jakub Bawej, Michał Krajewski, Tymoteusz Milej, and Bartosz Rylski from the Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering, as well as Andrzej Ziębiński from the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology.
The students developed a project titled "Preliminary Design of a Spacecraft Attitude Control System", focusing on the concept of a manoeuvring thruster and power supply system, as well as the development of an application and control algorithm for the Attitude Control System (ACS). A key innovation in their design was the inclusion of green hypergolic propellant technologies. Working in collaboration with Łukasz Mężyk, PhD, they conducted experimental drop tests of their proposed fuel-oxidizer mixture at the Division of Aircraft Engines within the Institute of Heat Engineering.
– We entered the competition to test our skills – and we actually ended up winning something – the students said. – We’re extremely proud to have completed such a comprehensive and exciting project, and we’re honored that our work was recognized by representatives of ArianeGroup.
The final event of the competition took place on 5 June 2025 at the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace (Air and Space Museum) at Le Bourget Airport near Paris. Of the 37 participating teams, 21 were selected to attend the final round and present their projects to an international jury.
The ArianeGroup Award, presented to the OrbitWUT team, is one of the event’s major sponsor distinctions and stands as a testament to the technical excellence and innovative potential of the team’s project.