Aurangabad: 22-year-old Vedang Kokil has brought laurels to the city with the presentation of his rocketry project at the Spaceport America Cup 2018, the world's largest intercollegiate rocket engineering conference and competition. The project was given a design award at the event. Marathwada Accelerator for Growth and Incubation Centre (MAGIC) under the Chamber of Marathwada Industries and Agriculture (CMIA) has organised sessions about his success story to motivate other students.Vedang, who is pursuing a BTech from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal created a student body named thrustMIT in the college and started working on rocketry. The team raised Rs5,000 as seed money, which was further sponsored by Polymer Products of India who gave Rs50,000. MIT management provided 250 sqft workspace to build the product.They assembled a team of 35 dynamic students. Amogh Govil took the team leader position, Vedang Kokil decided to work on avionics and Lokesh Kumar worked on structures and manufacturing. After 2 years they successfully built a prototype. Srikanth Rao, director, Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) unveiled the rocket build by thrustMIT.At Spaceport America Cup 2018, held from June 19-23, the team participated in the 10,000 feet solid propellant category and reached about 4,000 feet. The rocket is 8.5 feet tall and weighs 26 kilos. The fuselage has been built in-house using fibre glass and a matrix of resin and hardener.

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