These were just some of the questions year six students Magdalena Velovski and Berzebic Berzebic asked each other as they made a paper rocket at the 2018 Governor-General's design challenge.

The Queanbeyan East Public School students were among 120 year five and six students from 28 schools across the Canberra region who were challenged to design and build their own paper rocket.

"Our first rocket went far, but it didn't go that far because we didn't really have any flaps," 11-year-old Berzebic said.

"We knew we needed to find a way to get it up, maybe something to push it up rather than just letting the wind push it up as well, something more to force it and so we added flaps which sort of propelled it forward."

The event was an initiative between the Governor-General's office and Questacon as part of National Science Week.

Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Lady Cosgrove launched the rockets made by the students on the lawns of Government House.

Deputy director at Questacon Dr Bobby Cerini said students had to think, make, try and refine their designs in an attempt to get their team's rocket to fly the furthest.

"Today is all about engaging kids around processes of designing their own rockets," Dr Cerini said.

"They're learning about the fundamental process of design and design thinking that underpin all scientific knowledge and the production of new ideas."

She said by developing the rockets, students explored the principles of flight, propulsion and rocket design while also developing their creativity, critical thinking and collaboration skills.

"What we want to students to know is that any failure they get as they test the rocket is not failure to progress, it's actually a really valuable learning experience that everybody goes through as part of the scientific process," she said.

"We're teaching them that it's okay to fail in the course of learning to succeed."

Experts from the Australian National University, Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority , Geospatial Intelligence and UNSW Canberra Space were on hand to advise and help students build their rockets.

"So all of the components the students are building today - not the materials they're using because obviously today we're using paper, sticky tape and other home-style ingredients that they can easily access in their day to day lives and at school but all of the components that they're testing today are part of real rocketry," Dr Cerini said.

"If you look at any rocket that gets fired it will have the same component in it."

Unfortunately, Magdalena and Berzebic's team rocket didn't win, but they say they've learnt a lot about one of their favourite topics.