PARIS – The nine-member Rocketry Club at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School plans to compete in the National Association of Rocketry’s White Sands winter regional event in February.

The club is using a simulation program to design and build a rocket that will fly thousands of feet in the air over White Sands, N.M.

While there, club members will have the thrill of seeing high-powered rocket launches, and meet engineers and astronomers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

“There’s some pretty big motors that are pretty loud as they go up,” said Rocketry Club adviser Sandra Thomas, a math teacher at OHCHS. Some of the rockets at White Sands can go about a mile in the air, she said.

Thomas took a rocketry workshop two years ago as part of a master’s program in space studies, and formed the Rocketry Club last year with sponsorship by a local 4-H organization.

The club went last year to White Sands hoping to see a missile launch, but it got postponed, she said. This year the club is aiming to become part of the NAR competition.

“It gives them lots of exposure to the rocketry world,” Thomas said. “We have a whole new group of kids that are interested this year.”

The students study propulsion and the science and math of rocket design, she said.

The club has done some launches from the high school athletic field, said high school Principal Joe Moore. He expects approval when the group’s request to travel to White Sands goes before the school board at its next meeting.

Club members need to raise $900 each to fund the trip, and have planned a number of fund-raising activities, including T-shirt sales, bottle drives, car washes, and finding business and community group sponsors.

While at White Sands, the club plans to visit such local attractions as the White Sands Missile Range Museum, the White Sands National Monument, and the Goddard Museum and International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M.

Thomas said she hopes the students will have a chance to meet one of the last surviving members of American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard’s research team.