Coming off a big win the previous year, the team had lots of pressure to perform well again at the Spaceport America Cup. The team put together a beautiful rocket named North Star to compete for the  30,000 ft SRAD category title. With High Alt launching in North Branch, the team was able to bring 34 members down to New Mexico for SAC! 

The team put on an extremely impressive show of preparedness during the competition. North Star was the second rocket in line for flight safety review on the first launch day! 

This year's podium presentation was on the team's new knotless recovery harness, which received runner up for the Dr. Gil Moore Award for Innovation! 

The team decided to take the high altitude project in a different direction this year by developing a two stage rocket, a first for the team. After numerous months of research, design, and manufacturing, a test rocket affectionately named "Do Not Light," or "DNL" for short, took flight. With each launch of DNL, the team tested a new part of the system unique to two stage rockets. 

Every launch of DNL prepared the team for the final high alt vehicle of the year—Fenrir! This gorgeous two stage rocket was built to fly on two SRAD motors at our home launch site of Tripoli MN in North Branch. On July 28th, 2024, Fenrir took to the skies! After a beautiful boost and second stage ignition, the sustainer flew to 11,700 ft! Unfortunately, both the first and second stages appear to have failed to separate on descent, resulting in both coming in ballistic. 

Fenrir and DNL pushed the team to discover solutions to a large number of issues, such as the anti-boat tail coupler, as well as develop new casting techniques for smaller motors. As the team’s first foray into SRAD 2 stages, it was a very impressive and successful endeavor. 

This year, with the High Altitude project being the primary focus on the team, the SAC project was not as heavily invested in as seen in previous years.  However, that did not stop the team from returning to the 30,000 ft SRAD category, with a rocket named Crimson Stratus. Crimson Stratus was flown on our previously validated motor developed in 2020 named Charlie, a 94% O-class motor. 

Despite this being a secondary project this year, the team still continued to find a few more innovative systems to include on the vehicle, including a custom student design and machined 5-port pitot-static tube, an upgraded recovery harness, and more optimized composite body tubes and fins. The standard on the team at this point has been near-100% SRAD designs and systems across the entire vehicle, which has been continued into the design of Crimson Stratus this year.

As part of the competition, the team was also selected to present a podium presentation on the Pitot-Static tube, highlighting the testing that was done at Collins Aerospace Transonic Wind Tunnel, and the machine learning data analysis from calibration. 

Due to high winds at the competition, Crimson Stratus was not able to be launched until the second day of flying. However it was well worth the wait, as the flight was more perfect than the team could have hoped for, with a perfectly straight boost, flawless recovery deployment, and a relatively easy recovery. The only damage seen was minor scratching along the length of the vehicle, as it was dragged over 150 ft after landing due to the still relatively high winds. To make things even better, the team discovered upon recovery that the rocket flew to just 53 ft off of the simulated altitude for the flight, with an expected altitude of 29,500 ft and an actual achieved apogee of 29,447 ft -- a difference of just 0.18%! 

With an exceptional performance, the team won two awards, first place in the 30,000 ft SRAD Solid category, as well as first place for the James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics because of the 0.18% altitude difference! Alongside that, the team was also named a finalist for the Charles Holt award for Modeling and Simulation, but even more impressive was the the team was the HIGHEST SCORING team across the ENTIRE competition! 

Easily the most ambitious project by far our team has attempted, the High Altitude project focused on a rocket named Phoenix this year. Ultimately the flight was not successful in the end, but so many impressive challenges were solved along the way on this project. 

The launch occurred in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, specially arranged in part with Tripoli Minnesota to host a Tripoli "Minnesota" launch in the deserts of Nevada. With this opportunity available, the team set their goals high, initially trying to pass the Kármán line (100 km, or 328,000 ft). As the project developed throughout the year, and to ensure that the vehicle stayed within the Tripoli Safety Code, the goal was shifted slightly to target a lower altitude, closer to 300,000 ft. The reason for this shift was that the team was prioritizing having a safe flight of the vehicle, rather than trying to cut safety margins too thin in an effort to reach the 328,000 ft Kármán line. 

The launch was originally scheduled to occur in May 2023, but was pushed back to the end of July 2023 due to wet conditions at the Black Rock Desert playa, as well as to allow more time to make and process the impressive 240 lbs of propellant that would be used to boost Phoenix near the edge of space. Phoenix was an 8" sub-minimum diameter rocket standing 18.5 ft tall, with a loaded weight of 485 lbs. The motor, named Helena, made up an impressive nearly 400 lbs of that weight, and stood over 10 ft tall.  Helena was an R-class motor, with an average thrust of over 23,000 N, and a burn time of 10.4 seconds.

On July 29th, 2023 at 2:16 PM, Phoenix lifted off and had a beautiful first two second of the motor burn, but at 2.4 seconds into flight at ~2,000 ft AGL, the motor CATO'd, quickly ending the flight and sending the rest of the vehicle to plummet to the ground. Failure analysis indicates the motor experienced an overpressurization due likely to two main factors, first that there were some locations within the propellant with excessive voiding, as well as the peak pressure and thrust, which was expected to occur right around the time of the explosion, was much higher than simulated. All individuals were standing at a safe standoff distance, and no people or property was damaged in the failure. Although it was a very disappointing end to a significant effort on behalf of so many team members, it was an impressive but brief flight, and an impressive CATO to see firsthand. 

In an effort to improve the individual learning of each new recruit on our team, in Fall 2022 GOPHER orientation project shifted gears to have each new member design, build, and launch their rocket, one that they would be able to become Tripoli Level 1 certified with! Under the new program, one mentor would meet with groups of 4 to 6 students to help guide them through the design and build of their first rockets. A shockingly high number of new students were wanting to build their own rocket, with over 80 students finishing their rocket, and in just one day 61 members attempted their certification flight-- with 53 members successfully getting certified! It was a windy day for flying, but otherwise a beautiful day to get a whole new group interested in rocketry. The following weekend, 5 more students were able to get their certifications through the program as well!

Special projects focused their efforts on a few key tasks to support the large demands for ground support and testing, primarily from the High Altitude project. This included the development of Gold Celedon, a 4" diameter test rocket capable of flying between 1,000 ft and ~8,000 ft, with the main purpose being to test different recovery systems. Gold Celadon became the most flown rocket in team history, achieving 7 flights by the end of the school year, with plans to continue use in the future.

Additionally, the team spent a significant amount of time and effort converting the team's launch tower from a rail configuration into a tower configuration for the High Altitude spaceshot flight. After a year of careful modifications, the tower performed perfectly to lift the High Altitude Project, Phoenix, off the ground. 

The COVID pandemic was still lingering, which caused the competition to be held virtually, but that did not stop us from building and launching our competition rocket named Thunderyeet.  

Thunderyeet was launched at the local Tripoli Minnesota launch site in North Branch, MN in June 2021, flying on our SRAD 6" diameter motor named Charlie. The motor was flown with one grain removed to a lower altitude of 19,000', as the standing waiver was only 20,000'. The rocket design was similar in many aspects to previous competition years, but new was our first iteration of our fully student designed and developed Universal Flight Computer (UFC), meant to be a modular system that was easily adaptable from year to year. The flight was mostly successful, except for the parachutes shredding due to suspected high horizontal velocity at deployment. Despite this, the rocket remained nearly completely unharmed minus some chipped paint.  

The year was challenging in many new ways, due to COVID there was strictly no access to our team's lab space in the fall semester, and in the spring only four people were allowed in the lab at a time to comply with social distancing guidelines, causing our rockets were built on a more last-minute compressed timeline. Recruitment for the team was at an all time low due to the pandemic as well. Fun fact: of our 17 different leadership positions on the team, not a single one was contested during the spring elections! 

The High Altitude team reached for their highest altitude yet: 100,000 feet. This rocket was known by many names, with an official name of Kuiper, but was commonly referred to instead as Hot Rod, or even just "Kevin", which was the name of the motor used. This sub-minimum diameter rocket was 4" in diameter and just under 13 feet tall, and to some looked more like a pole than a rocket due to the disproportionately small fins on the rocket (which were designed this way to help maintain a stable flight throughout the entire flight profile). The ~O6,000 motor with around 23,000 Ns total impulse occupied the majority of the rocket. There were many firsts in this rocket for the team, including the first time making two new parachute types (annular main, disc-gap-band drogue), using cable cutters for main parachute deployment, having a welded steel fincan, and first time launching at the FAR site in California.

This rocket took three lower altitude test flights of various components to gain enough confidence in the systems to launch out at FAR. Despite all the preparations, on Sept. 4th, 2021 when Hot Rod took to the skies, there was a structural failure of the aluminum body tube at around 3,500' AGL which caused the top half of the rocket to break off, and Kevin went soaring off into the skies without the rest of the rocket to lead the way. The failure occurred due to a combination of thin body tubes, a weld joint, and high bending moments. Kevin was later recovered by the launch site staff a few months later, and as of Spring of 2023, the team has finally been reuinited with our beloved motor after paying a hefty shipping fee. 

Moving into 2019, our team had the first taste of victory at Spaceport America. We again continued to compete in the 30k SRAD category and took home first place with our rocket named "Thunderstroick VII: The Stroick Awakens". This 6" minimum diameter rocket was powered by our motor named "Sheila", which had a beautiful flight besides some minor recovery problems (parachutes tearing) on the way down which resulted in a bent fin on landing. 

Our High Altitude team also launched the same week at Spaceport America as an exhibition launch, using a Cesaroni N2540G to launch a 4" sub-minimum diameter rocket to 44,910 ft, setting the highest altitude recorded for the team. As of 2022, this altitude still remains the highest the team has successfully flown to, despite later attempting higher altitudes.  

Near the end of 2018, our Alka Rocket team returned to Bayer's campus in Florida to make another attempt at the world record of highest rocket powered by Alka Seltzer tablets. Our team was again victorious in the unconventional rocketry competition, taking home the 1st place trophy along with $30,000 to help fund our team. 

Further details of this rocket and competition can be found on our Alka page. 

The company Beyer released a new competition to occur in the fall of 2017, with the idea of using the pressure generated from gases released by Alka Seltzer tablets to be used to power a rocket. They challenged college teams to see who could beat the world record, and lured in teams, including ours, with the grand prize of a $25,000 check to the winning team. 

These rockets were much smaller in scale than we were used to (think model rocket size), and of course was a bit unconventional mode of propulsion. Despite that, a group on the team formed ready to take on the challenge. In December of 2017, we were proudly named the Guiness World Record holders for highest Alka Seltzer powered rocket, reaching 429 ft AGL. 

The team took on the 2018 SAC challenge in hopes from some redemption from the previous structural failure from the year before. The rocket was named "Thunderstroick IV: A New Hope" (a mashup between Star Wars and our mentor Gary Stroick's last name) and we were again competing in the 30k SRAD category. 

Unfortunately, as the rocket approached mach 1 a structural failure occured as the fins failed due to flutter. This was due to the fiberglass fins simply being too thin. This ultimately led the team away from composite fins for a while, in future years opting for a welded aluminum fincan instead. 

2017 marked the first year that the competition had shifted over to the new launch site at Spaceport America in New Mexico, and was then renamed Spaceport America Cup. Our team competed in the 30k SRAD category under a rocket named "Maroon Flyve", moving back to what would become our standard 6" minimum diameter rocket design for the next few years. 

This year the team continued to do some great development on our solid rocket motor development, and the team's first static fire on an O-class motor successfully occured. This flight was the return of our SRAD motors to competition, which was done on an ~O4600 (37,000 Ns) motor. Other highlights of this rocket include use of both fiberglass and carbon fiber airframes, further development on the rover payload, continuation of pitot tube and SRAD flight computers, controlled canards, and parachute reefing. Unfortunately there was a structural failure of the rocket and the tubes were zippered during flight.  

This was the year of the beginning of the rise of  the High Altitude project, despite remaining a relatively small portion of the team. The high altitude team was not intending to compete in any regular competition, instead as we like to call it it's a competition with the sky, where we were truely just trying to see how high we could launch on solid rocket motors. 

This project launched as an exhibition launch at Spaceport America in 2017, flying a 54mm minimum diameter rocket to an attempted 40k feet. The motor had a failure where the nozzle blew out on ascent which reduced the apogee from 40k ft to 20k ft. This rocket was originally intended to be an upper stage for a two stage rocket in the future that would be capable of going to over 100,000 ft, however the team is yet to have made a two stage rocket.

With an ever-expanding team, it became clear that there was a need to better educate new team members on the basics of rocketry. GOPHER was introduced as a way for experienced/senior members of team team to mentor smaller groups of students through building a small L1-style rocket. Why was it named GOPHER? It is an acronym standing for the Grand Opening Project to Help Educate Rocketeers, and is also our school's mascot! 

Back in 2010, an Aerospace Engineering student at the university named Mark Abotossaway attended the American Indian Science and Engineering (AISES) diversity conference in October of 2010. There, he met the organizers of the WSGC First Nations Launch, and knew that he had to find some way to participate. At the time, no one at the University had any experience in rocketry, but was able to form a small team of 5 individuals with the help of Professor Bill Garrard, Director of the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium  at the time, which was the start of our team today. 

The new team started working together in November of 2010 , and a few months later were able to get in touch with a local rocketry expert, Gary Stroick, who then became our team's mentor and remains so to this day. The team had their first test flight in April at the local Tripoli launch site in North Branch, MN, and later won 1st place in the First Nations Launch AISES division!