For nine months, a group of engineering students worked building a rocket which they hoped to send 50,000ft (15,240m) above the Earth.
The 13ft (4m) long Gryphon II (G2) was successfully launched from a military training range at Cape Wrath in the far north of Scotland on Friday.
But it did not splash down in the sea where they expected – and now members of Leeds University Rocketry Association (Lura) are hunting for their missing rocket.
Seb Bull, one of the students who has been searching for G2 with the help of local fishermen, said: “It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s a large area of sea.”
They had hoped to break a UK amateur altitude record but they need the rocket to verify the record.
They believe it may have washed up on the north Highland coast or drifted out to Orkney or Shetland.
