After the lessons learned from Phoenix, the project decided to take a new approach. The team began to work on a 2-stage vehicle, which would be more efficient than our single stage design and provide a strong foundation for a future space shot. The team's first 2-stage vehicle was a test rocket named Fireboy & Watergirl, which successfully flew three times in 2024 and reaching an apogee of 3,400ft. Its successful test campaign validated our design and led to the construction of Fenrir. 

Fenrir flew at North Branch, MN on July 28th on two SRAD motors. High wind speeds caused the sustainer motor to ignite at a greater angle than expected, but overall ascent was nominal and the sustainer, Skol, reached an apogee of 12,500ft. Unfortunately, recovery deployment failures caused the booster to break on impact and the sustainer to be lost. While a sour note to end a great launch and project year, Fenrir was a great success. It reached all target objectives for 2-stage validation, and future 2-stage endeavors are more possible thanks to what Fenrir accomplished.

Project Phoenix took to the skies on the afternoon of July 29th, 2023 at the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. This 8 inch diameter, 18.5 ft tall, 485 lb single-stage rocket pushed the bounds of collegiate rocketry, boosted by an R-class, Student Researched and Developed (SRAD) motor named Helena. Every part of this vehicle was custom designed and manufactured. At 2,000 ft AGL, 2.4 seconds after launch, the motor experienced an overpressurization leading to a CATO, resulting in destruction of the vehicle. The target altitude for this flight was 322,000 ft and was expected to reach mach 4.5 along the way. Despite the failure, it was an impressive flight and rocket overall, and the team will take many learnings from this project into future developments for the high altitude project, as focus is now shifting towards 2-stage rockets on the team. 

This year we began the development of our biggest project yet. With the intent to jump over the 100,000 ft mark, we reworked all of our designs to meet the new set of requirements that come with high altitude flights. Included in these new challenges is the design of our biggest propulsion module to date, re-envisioned recovery strategy, and an emphasis on Launch and Structural simulations.

In order to maximize our altitude, we are combing over every part in our design to lose weight and practice our engineering expertise in the calculation and simulation of the strength of our vehicle. With two years going into our current rocket, We are confident we will meet our goals and exceed our team's altitude record on a successful flight.

This year we continued to develop the sub-minimum diameter design using one of our own propellant formulations, and refined the structure of the rocket, possibly reducing the weight of the aluminum coupler.

We also began experimenting with two-stage rockets with the goal of eventually launching a two stage rocket at Spaceport America in the coming years.