Midnight Sun Revelation

On June 3^rd, the Midnight Sun student team unveiled the brand new iteration of their award-winning solar powered race car, the Midnight Sun X. They celebrated the 23^rd year of the Midnight Sun student team by unveiling their tenth edition of their race car. The day started off in the brand new Student Design Center at the University of Waterloo’s newest building, Engineering 5, with a presentation by Daniel Matzeg, the Midnight Sun Project Manager who is in fourth year Mechanical Engineering. Exciting videos from the World Solar Challenge of 2009 with the Midnight Sun 9 crew racing across the Australian outback set the mood for the day ahead.

The Midnight Sun X started off in the winter of 2010 with a brand new design cycle. The Midnight Sun Team is completely run by students with the assistance of alumni previously involved in the project as well as professors. The car is built from scratch with almost all of it fabricated in-house at the Student Machine Shop located in the Student Design Center. The car comprises of two main parts, the aerobody shell made of Kevlar and Nomex which houses the solar cells; and the chassis which contains the aluminum frame, the driver’s cockpit, the batteries, wheels, etc. The aerobody was also painstakingly shaped by hand to smooth out irregularities which may affect the performance of the car.

The team, although presently short of funds, expects to compete in the World Solar Challenge this October. The team had earlier withdrawn from the American Solar Challenge this year because the car was not in racing shape due to dearth of funding. The World Solar Challenge is a 3,000 kilometre long race from Darwin at the northern end of the Australia to Adelaide in southern Australia. The team is allowed to take as many pit-stops to charge up their car as required. One of the most important aspects of racing, as one would know, is strategy. The Midnight Sun team has their own strategy team comprised of expert mathematicians that decide when and how the car stops to charge up, what speed it runs at and other aspects of competition. This team is normally seen following the race car in a separate chase car during the race.

The launch was graced by the presence of the Dean of Engineering, Adel Sedra, the Director of the Student Design Center, Dr. Peter Teerstra, as well as several sponsors and some alumni that had contributed extensively to the team’s success in the past. One of them was Silvia Pascual, one of the drivers who drove the Midnight Sun 7 across the North American continent to make it the longest journey ever made by a solar powered vehicle. Greg Thompson, one the engineers involved with the Midnight Sun 6, 7 and 8, followed and said that “it is nice to see the project continue. The new headquarters looks awesome and I hope that they continue to leave a long lasting legacy.” Dean Sedra too expressed his pride to be involved with such a project. He stressed the importance of learning teamwork through such student-run projects and commended the effort of the team members.

The car rested below a Canadian flag before it was officially unveiled. It was then taken for a drive around the campus. As it drove around Ring Road, people just stood and watched the majestic car as it passed by. The team demonstrated the importance of interdisciplinary engineering and design and in Dean Sedra’s words “truly made Waterloo Engineering proud.”