Spaceport America Cup (SA Cup)

Website: https://spaceportamericacup.com/

Lead: Jake Vazquez (MAE ’26)

Duration: full year, launch in Summer 2024 at Spaceport America

Description:

The Spaceport America Cup (SA Cup) is the world’s largest intercollegiate rocket engineering conference and competition, held annually at Spaceport America, New Mexico. We have competed at the SA Cup twice before, in 2019 and 2023. Our 2019 team successfully reached 10,700 feet and placed 7th in the 10k COTS Division. Our 2023 team successfully reached an estimated 32,000 feet and placed 22nd in the 30k COTS Division.

Our SA Cup team offers students a fantastic opportunity to build their engineering knowledge and skills, as well as make connections with like-minded individuals from other schools and in the industry. Team members work collaboratively to design, manufacture, test, and launch the rocket from the ground up. This year, our SA Cup team will be constructing a single-stage, solid-fuel rocket intended to reach 30,000 feet, carrying a CubeSat payload of various technical and scientific experiments. This project comprises five main sub-teams: airframe, avionics/telemetry, payload, recovery, and operations/logistics.

SpaceShot

Website: https://spaceshot.princeton.edu/

Lead: Hriday Unadkat (MAE ’26)

Duration: two years, launch in Summer 2025

Description:

SpaceShot has embarked on an ambitious mission to elevate Princeton Rocketry to new heights above the Karman Line. The team hopes to break a few records, including: 1) launching the first two-stage student rocket to reach the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of outer space (100 km altitude) 2) doing so by creating the smallest rocket by vehicle mass to ever reach outer space (Previous recordholder: Super Loki Robin Dart) 3) complete these goals in an efficient manner by sending the cheapest rocket ever to reach outer space (adjusted for inflation). To make these aspirations a reality, the team has meticulously crafted a comprehensive multi-year budget, established an early-stage research and development document spanning over 100 pages, and strategically distributed tasks among its dedicated subteams. Currently, team members are immersing themselves in rocketry literature and software to prepare for the forthcoming rocket design and early manufacturing phase scheduled for this year.

National Association of Rocketry: High Power Rocketry (HPR)

Website: https://www.nar.org/high-power-rocketry-info/

Leads: Anuja Magdum (MAE ’26); Sonal Bhatia (MAE ’26)

Duration: full year; launches in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024

Description:

Dedicated to fostering growth among new members, the club is committed to enabling newcomers to gain experience in designing, building, and launching Level 1 & 2 high power rockets. We employ both kits and custom designs for the rocket body as well as developing our own payloads equipped with GPS, accelerometers, atmospheric sensors, and custom PCBs. High Power Rocketry (HPR) allows our members to develop skills using hand tools, CAD programs, and microprocessors as well as soldering, coding, and experiencing the joy of watching something you built soar into the air at hundreds of miles per hour. In a project tailored towards new members, our seasoned rocketeers provide mentorship to a dozen members as they build their first high power rocket. These members form groups to build their own rockets, which causes each rocket to take on distinct characteristics that align with the interests of its creators. These encompass diverse elements such as unique payloads, optimized apogee, and communication with ground equipment.

The High Power Rocketry project is Princeton Rocketry’s longest running project, currently in its seventh year. It is a great introduction to rocketry for students who want to take ownership of a hands-on project as soon as possible. With mentorship from experienced rocketeers, members have learned the crucial skills to continue on and make significant contributions to the club's other projects, no matter the individual's background or field of study.

Balloon Research Glider Recovery (BRGR)

Website: https://floatingdragon.nianet.org/

Lead: Adin Kojic (MAE ’25)

Duration: full year

Description:

The Balloon Research Glider Recovery (BRGR) team was formed for the FLOATing DRAGON competition, sponsored by NASA. The glider will carry data from a high-altitude balloon to a recovery point on land. The team’s design won finalist status in the competition, which awards financial support and mentorship so that the glider can be built and ultimately launched. Ultimately, no student vehicles were released due to Air Traffic Control concerns. The team intends to fly their own balloon flight to test the glider.

The BRGR vehicle is designed to autonomously glide to a landing site’s GPS coordinates. It is a fixed-wing glider in a monoplane configuration and uses grid fins in place of normal control surfaces. The body and wings are made of carbon fiber, with the body being a Commercial Off-The-Self (COTS) part and the wings are a vacuum-bagged wet-layup. It uses GPS to navigate, as well as onboard sensors such as an IMU, altimeter, and pitot tube. The landing site can be any open area, or a moving target if modified with an RF link. The craft is capable of gliding as slow as 13 m/s before stalling.

High-Altitude Ballooning (HAB)

Lead: Adin Kojic (MAE ’25)

Duration: full year

Description:

High-Altitude Ballooning (HAB) is the art and science of sending payloads to the stratosphere. Last year we achieved a team record of 106,524 feet and demonstrated its value as a testbed for programs such as BRGR. With almost the entire sky below us, we captured unique views of New York City and the Jersey shore.

This year we plan to climb higher and do more, as with our recent recovery successes justify to us the deployment of more sophisticated balloons, including better cameras, higher altitudes, and more advanced science missions. We also intend to record the shadow of the Moon passing over the Earth on April 8 during the 2024 North American Total Solar Eclipse.

NASA RASC-AL

Website: https://rascal.nianet.org/

Leads: Mori Ono (MAE ’25); Evan Alfandre (MAE ’25); Sujay Swain (ECE ’25)

Duration: Fall 2023 to at least Spring 2024

Description:

This team competes in the annual NASA RASC-AL competition, a design competition focused on developing innovative, multidisciplinary mission plans for extending humanity's presence in outer space. We plan to build on our experiences submitting a proposal last year, which focused on the Homesteading Mars theme of supporting four astronauts on Mars for seven years with minimal resupply.

New themes have been announced for the 2024 competition: we are currently considering the Large Scale Lunar Crater Prospector theme, which focuses on developing a long-duration mining rover for operations at the Lunar south pole. Along with the initial proposal and video submission due in March, we hope to develop a prototype that demonstrates key functions of our design. Teams selected as finalists will present their work at the RASC-AL forum in Florida in June. We may further pursue concepts developed as part of the competition proposal as part of a technical paper.