Competition
Spaceport America Cup
“The Spaceport America Cup is designed around IREC – the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition for student rocketry teams from all over the country and around the world. With over 110 teams from colleges and universities in eleven countries, 2017 will be the competition’s biggest year yet. Students will be launching solid, liquid, and hybrid rockets to target altitudes of 10,000 and 30,000 feet.”
– Spaceport America’s Website
All Teams are judged on the following criteria:
- Technical poster and podium sessions before an expert judges panel during a conference day
- Written technical report report on their project concept, requirements, design implementation, and testing
- Written technical report appendices on safety analysis, including hazard & risk assessments
- Quality and competency of final design implementation
- Amount of student researched & developed systems, versus off-the-shelf components
- Rocket flight performance measured by distance from target altitude and successful recovery
- Payload innovation and functionality
- Professional conduct and use of procedures
For more information visit the Spaceport America site.
Milestones
2023: Zenith
- 30k attempt
- Teams first minimum diameter competition attempt
- Placed 5th at Spaceport America Cup in division
- 100% recovery rate
2023: Great Value Zenith
- Full scale test rocket for Zenith
- Teams first minimum diameter attempt
- Build in 6 weeks
- 100% recovery rate
2022: Forward Unto Dawn
- Successful 30k attempt
- Cubesat payload format
- Placed 5th at Spaceport America Cup in division
- 100% recovery rate
2021: Andromeda II
- Teams first successful 30k feet attempt
- Highest impulse motor the team has used thus far
- 100% recovery rate
2019: Nova
- First year where two rockets were constructed
- Seven launches between these two rockets were conducted
- 100% recovery rate
2018: Daedalus
- First student designed and built 30k feet rocket
- New more powerful antenna design
2017: Hades
- First flight on a student designed and built solid rocket motor (Zeus motor)
- WIFI communication between the avionics bays reducing internal wiring
- First GPS tracking system used for rocket recovery
2016: Helios
- First fully student designed and built composite airframe
- First working telemetry system
2015: Hyperion
- Team’s first flight attempt at IREC
- First in-house made parachutes
- First in-house nosecone
- Intended to fly to 25,000 feet, crashed, utterly destroyed on impact