A team of students and recent graduates at Peru\u2019s Pontificia Universidad Cat\u00f3lica del Per\u00fa has built a rocket from scratch and already proved it can fly. Their Kuntur-1 reached about 500 meters during a test launch in Chincha, and the group is preparing for the Latin American Space Challenge in Brazil on September 2 to 5, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is an exciting tech milestone, but it also arrives as scientists and regulators start paying closer attention to what rockets leave behind in the upper atmosphere. As launches scale up, even small amounts of soot, chlorine, and metal particles<\/a> can matter more than most people expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Kuntur-1 effort grew out of a 2023 engineering course and has expanded into the student-led Grupo de Ingenier\u00eda Aeroespacial (Aerospace Engineering Group), which now brings together more than 60 members. Team leaders have described building “from zero” while facing limited access to specialized public information and a lack of clear national rules for rocketry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The March 2026 flight in Peru\u2019s Ica region was about validating fundamentals, including propulsion<\/a>, aerodynamics, and structure, and the rocket used a parachute system to recover hardware. Reports describe the vehicle as a little over a meter long with an 80-mm diameter, powered by a single stage solid motor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peru\u2019s space agency CONIDA supported the launch operation, and the team\u2019s next test is competitive rather than technical. The Latin American Space Challenge<\/a> is scheduled to run in Iacanga in S\u00e3o Paulo state, and it is a rare place where university teams can launch, recover, and compare real flight performance side by side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Solid propulsion is a practical choice for early programs, because it reduces plumbing and moving parts compared to many liquid systems. If you have ever watched a fireworks show and noticed that sharp chemical smell in the air afterward, you have a rough idea of why scientists look past carbon dioxide and focus on specific compounds and particles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A major policy review from The Aerospace Corporation argues that the key global concerns are chlorine and alumina particles from solid rocket motors and soot<\/a> from some hydrocarbon engines, because rockets inject these materials directly into the stratosphere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same review notes that small particles can linger for years, which means emissions from multiple launch seasons can accumulate in thin layers where the ozone layer also sits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ozone layer is healing from the era of chlorofluorocarbons, but it is not a finished story, and researchers are trying to quantify how much a faster launch cadence could slow that progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A 2025 paper in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science<\/em> modeled two growth scenarios and found that ozone losses were driven largely by chlorine from solid propellant and black carbon (soot) emitted by many propellants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In their “ambitious” scenario of 2,040 launches per year, the authors estimated a 0.29% drop in annual mean near-global total column ozone in 2030, with a much larger seasonal hit over Antarctica in spring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even their “conservative” scenario of 884 launches per year produced a 0.17% annual near global decrease, and they warned current licensing trends suggest that level could be exceeded before 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A separate 2026 study in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics<\/em> focused on chlorine and found that a tenfold increase in rocket chlorine emissions relative to 2019 produced less than 0.1 Dobson Unit<\/a> (a common ozone metric) of near-global ozone loss, while a far larger increase produced bigger and more regional effects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These are modeled scenarios rather than day-to-day forecasts, but they point in the same direction, and that is why monitoring is starting to look like a core part of space sustainability.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKuntur-1 shows what a new space race looks like on campus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Solid rocket motors are simple, but the emissions are complicated<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ozone recovery has a new variable in the equation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Space sustainability is now part of the business conversation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n