NICHOLAS LERAS, 16 year old resident of Wakefield qualified to be a member of the U.S. National Model Rocketry team and compete in the World Spacemodeling Championship, August 2025 in Serbia.
WAKEFIELD — Nicholas Leras, a 16-year-old resident of Wakefield, has just qualified to be a member of the U.S. National Model Rocketry team. The 2025 U.S. Spacemodeling Team will compete in the World Spacemodeling Championship held next August in Zrenjanin, Serbia. The US team, sponsored by the National Association of Rocketry will compete against teams from twenty four other countries. Nicholas will be representing the United States in the S5B Scale Altitude competition.
The World Spacemodeling Championship is organized under the auspices of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) which is the governing body for all aspects of international aviation sports. The World Spacemodeling Championships are held every two years most recently in 2023 in Austin, Texas.
The Championship Nicholas will be participating in is the Olympics of international model rocketry. Each championship begins with an opening ceremony where teams march in by country in their uniforms carrying their national flag. The event lasts a week and each day’s competition ends with a medal ceremony which includes Olympic style medal stands and the raising of the home country flags of the winners while the national anthem of the gold medalist is played.
Nicholas, a Wakefield resident qualified to be a member of the 2025 U.S. Spacemodeling Team this past August in Pueblo, Colorado by competing against junior model rocket flyers from across the US. At that competition, Nicholas flew several events and earned his way onto the team in one of those disciplines.
For the World Championship team, Nicholas will be representing the United States in an event called S5B Scale Altitude. This extremely challenging event combines attention to detail and performance skills. Modelers must recreate an exact scale version of a rocket that has flown for a government or commercially. After being judged on how beautifully and accurately the rocket is constructed, the rocket is then sent towards space with an altimeter to determine the highest flight. The total score is the sum of the build quality and altitude scores. Just as in the Olympics, Nicholas will be representing the United States both as an individual and as a member of a four person team.
The National Association of Rocketry and U.S. Spacemodeling are really pleased to welcome Nicholas to our team!
