Spaceport America Cup
The Spaceport America Cup is our flagship competition, where we launch a rocket with a 4kg payload to 30,000 feet on a homemade propellant formulation.
The event is held annually by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association at Spaceport America in New Mexico. 150+ teams participate in this international collegiate challenge.
About the Subteams
The Structure
For the past three years the rocket has been 6 inches in diameter and about 12 -15 feet tall, and employed a minimum diameter design. We construct our own composite tubes from carbon fiber and fiberglass to form the main body tubes of the rocket. Our fin design has gone through several iterations for geometry and composition, and our swept carbon fiber fins have served our rockets well in recent years.
The Motor
Because we compete in the SRAD (Student Researched And Designed) category, we get to design and construct our own motor. Our propellant formulation was developed in-house after a very long development program and is now very reliable. For SA Cup, we use a 6 inch diameter case, and a 48 inch long motor design. In this configuration, Our 2023 motor, designated Charlie, outputs a maximum of about 2300 lbf of thrust in 7 seconds.
Universal Flight Computer (UFC)
Our primary flight computer project since 2019 has been our Universal Flight Computer, or UFC. The UFC was proposed as a solution to the problem of having to completely redesign our flight computers from the ground up whenever a single component change was desired. The UFC is a multi-card stack connected by a single backplane via a PCIE physical layer.
The Payload
The 4kg payload we are required to fly can be anything we choose. The last two years, the team has flown a quadcopter, increasing its functionality year-by-year. This upcoming year, the payload team will be designing a Digital In-line Holography sensor to measure the size and concentration of airborne particles during the rocket's ascent.
The Recovery System
For the past couple of years, our rocket has employed a traditional dual deploy architecture with a drogue chute that deploys at apogee (30,000ft), and a main chute that deploys at 1000ft. We sew both of these parachutes ourselves, and have double redundant ejection charges with double redundant commercial altimeters for deployment.
Meet Our Past Rockets
Thunderyeet
2020-2021
This rocket was launched at Tripoli MN and won us FIRST PLACE OVERALL in the Virtual SAC 2021 Competition.
Iridium Sandstorm
2021-2022
This 10k SRAD solid motor rocket featured an impressive active control module, but ended up splitting in half during ascent because of an airbrake failure.
Crimson Stratus
2022-2023
This rocket won the 30k SRAD category, was the highest overall scoring rocket in the competition, and reached a competition-best 53' (0.19%) off our projected altitude.
Maroon Flyve
2016-2017
This 30kft SRAD solid motor rocket experienced a structural failure during the ascent (often referred to as a shred).
Thunderstroick IV: A New Hope
2017-2018
This 30kft SRAD solid motor rocket had a fin failure due to flutter, resulting in zippering of the body tubes as it approached Mach 1.
Thunderstroick VII: The Stroick Awakens
2018-2019
This rocket started the team's successful run and won us first place in our category of 30kft SRAD solid motors at Spaceport America Cup in 2019.
Spaceport America Cup 2023
Returning to the 30k SRAD category, our 6 inch diameter, 14 foot tall, and 150 pound rocket, Crimson Stratus soared on our entirely custom motor hardware to 29,450 ft.
The rocket carried a student built quadcopter payload and a custom 5 hole pitot tube that measures air speed, angle of attack, and angle of side slip.
Thanks to the hard work of the many team members involved, we achieved first place in our 30k SRAD category with a nominal flight and perfect recovery. We also received the James Barrowman Award for Flight Dynamics for being 0.18% off our simulated apogee!
Spaceport America Cup 2022
In 2022, we competed in the 10k SRAD category, bringing our largest and most advanced rocket so far! This 8" diameter rocket, dubbed "Iridium Sandstorm" flew on entirely new custom motor hardware weighing about 260 pounds at the pad.
This rocket had a lot of technical achievements with new active control and avionics hardware, structural design components, and an entirely new payload design.
Unfortunately, the rocket prematurely separated at 4,100 ft due to excessive drag. While this did impact our overall score, we learned a lot about what goes into a rocket of this size and ways that we can improve. The lessons learned from this flight helped us win our category next year!
Spaceport America Cup 2021
During this illustrious year, we won FIRST PLACE in our division of the Spaceport America Cup (30,000ft SRAD category) as well as being declared the overall competition winners!
This virtual competition brought 75 teams together from 6 continents, who were evaluated based on technical reports, a 15-minute video presentation, and a brief Q & A session during the competition weekend. We are honored to have competed alongside so many excellent teams and excited to announce our success!
Many dedicated team members put in a lot of work to get us to this point, and we are very proud of each and every one! We’d also like to thank all of our sponsors, our alumni and everyone who participated in our fundraiser to help us raise money to fund our research and work!
