Project Prometheus
Soaring to the Skies at SA Cup!
Princeton Rocketry placed 10th in the 30k COTS category out of 27 teams at the Spaceport America (SA) Cup! This milestone marks a historic achievement for our team as it is the first time in Princeton Rocketry history that a rocket of such scale has been successfully retrieved.
Our rocket soared to an impressive altitude of 24,500 ft, reaching Mach 1.6 and experiencing 24.6 Gs of acceleration. This is the largest and most powerful rocket we have ever launched at SA Cup, and our first-ever successful launch and recovery in the 30k COTS division.
High Power Rocketry
Annual Training Ground
High Power Rocketry serves as an annual training ground for aspiring aerospace enthusiasts, where they learn to design, build, and launch advanced rockets without any experience required. This team emphasizes skills in engineering, teamwork, and basic project management. In March 2024, 30+ members successfully launched 11 rockets reaching apogees ranging between 700-800 feet.
High-Altitude Ballooning
To New Heights and Back
The High-Altitude Ballooning team has completed four launches in the past two years. All launches succeeded and the balloon was also recovered successfully for the last two launches.
4/27/2022: Carried Department of Physics particle detector payload and traveled >100 miles
12/10/2022: Reached >40,000 ft in altitude and traveled >200 miles
5/3/2023: Flight time of 1 hr and 40 mins, and reached an altitude of 80,000 ft. Also served as a test for the Stratoglider project. Payload and on-board footage recovered successfully.
7/12/2023: Reached >106,000 ft in altitude with a flight time of 4 hours and 30 minutes. Recovered successfully with footage of the NYC area.
Project Star Scream
Returning Higher in the Desert
Princeton Rocketry returned to the Spaceport America Cup in June 2023 with a 30k ft COTS division entry that used a minimum-diameter design. Though a successful launch was achieved, the rocket was unable to be recovered.
NOAH’S M-ARC
Homesteading Mars
Princeton Rocketry’s 2023 NASA RASC-AL competition entry was designed to support four astronauts on Mars for seven years. It featured a 3D printed habitat, a novel system for greenhouse illumination, and a range of ISRU systems for long-term habitat growth.
Stratoglider
The Stratoglider (previously known as Balloon Research Glider Recovery) team was named a finalist for the NASA FLOATing DRAGON competition. The glider carried 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 concerns with Air Traffic Control. The team intends to conduct a balloon flight with HAB to test the glider.
The Stratoglider 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.
SELENE
Durable Low-mass Lunar Surface Habitat
SELENE was Princeton Rocketry and TU Delft’s 2021 NASA RASC-AL competition entry, and centered around the creation of a radiation-shielded igloo habitat. A hydraulic press would compress a mixture of Lunar regolith and binder to manufacture brick building blocks at a large scale for construction.
LIGHTSABER
Light-based System for Ablation of Exterior Residues
This 2021 NASA BIG Idea Challenge focused on the problem of dealing with hazardous Lunar dust on space suits. LIGHTSABER aimed to address this through dry laser cleaning, which would remove the dust with localized rapid thermal ablation.
Soft Robotic Gripper for Ocean Worlds
Mini-Arm End-Effector
As part of the 2019 NASA Micro-g NExT challenge, Princeton Rocketry pursued the design of a gripper tool for collecting samples on ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus. We used a neoprene bag filled with small granules to adjust between malleable and rigid states. The team was selected as one of 19 teams to advance to the second competition phase.
Project Nebula
Princeton Rocketry’s First Competition Rocket
The Project Nebula rocket launched to >10,700 ft and Mach 0.79 before being successfully recovered, placing Princeton Rocketry in 7th out of 46 in the 10k ft COTS division of the 2019 Spaceport America Cup.
ThinSat
Circuit boards to Space
The ThinSat program is organized by Virginia Space, and provided us the opportunity to launch various types of rapid prototype circuit boards into space to determine their ability to function in the space environment. The ThinSats were launched into orbit on ThinSat-2 aboard an Antares rocket in February 2021.
SpaceShot 2019
Take Two
Two launches were manufactured for the 2019 SpaceShot attempt. The first launch proceeded nominally until dynamic instability during the stage 2 burn, and a height of over 84 km was achieved. The second launch suffered a 2nd stage ignition failure, leading to a peak height of over 20 km.
SpaceShot 2018
Two Stages to Outer Space
Princeton Rocketry’s first attempt to become the first collegiate rocket team to reach space (100 km) and become the first hypersonic student built vehicle. A two-stage vehicle that utilized an advanced composite construction was launched to 14 km and Mach 2.8, but the second stage failed to ignite.
Project Stratos
Reusable, Low-Cost Sounding Rocket
The 2017 Project Stratos sounding rocket reached 39,000 ft and Mach 3 on less than 5,500 Ns of impulse. This design would eventually serve as the second stage sustainer for the subsequent SpaceShot vehicle.
CanSat 2017 & 2018
Rocket Payloads For Space Applications
Organized by the AAS and AIAA, CanSat is a design-build-launch competition to design payloads for high-power rockets. The team built a prototype for a solar-powered Venus glider in 2017, and placed 25th out of 87 teams. In 2018, the team built a probe that deployed an aero-braking heat shield.