Aurora

Aurora launching at the Lone Star Cup

The Goal

Aurora sought to improve upon our processes from Olympus and integrate active aerodynamic airbrakes to more precisely achieve our simulated altitude.

The Process

Over the course of our year-long design and manufacturing process, I worked hands-on on essentially every inch of the rocket. In this section, I'll highlight my key contributions.

Airframe Integration & Fin Assembly

The primary structure of Aurora consists of a fiberglass airframe paired with carbon-fiber fin structures designed for sustained transonic flight. I was responsible for fabricating and integrating these components into the final flight vehicle.

For the airframe, there was a large focus placed on precise surface preparation and bonding to ensure structural continuity across coupling sections and other load-bearing interfaces. Minimizing geometric imperfections is critical to prevent significant asymmetric loading and excessive aerodynamic drag.

The fin system was constructed with G10 fiberglass and reinforced with a wet, vacuum-bagged carbon-fiber layup to maximize stiffness-to-weight ratio and reduce fin flutter at high dynamic pressures. We designed and fabricated fin alignment tools to ensure symmetry and accurate cant angles. Epoxy bonding procedures were controlled to ensure adequate fillet geometry and load distribution at fin roots.

Aurora's fins with a carbon fiber layup

Uh-Oh

Deep into the build process, we discovered that the mass of our rocket was too high, and we would not leave the launch pad with a high enough velocity to ensure stability. Since we were so far into the process, we had to trim off part of our fins to recover performance. This sort of mistake can induce a lot of error, so, as the chief engineer of our IREC 2027 rocket, I will take greater care to keep our design updated as we move through the construction process.

To help mitigate inconsistencies in the fins, I designed and 3-D printed a fin beveling system to ensure the fins were as consistent as possible. While the design worked flawlessly, I am designing a more robust, universal system to keep in the organization for its future rockets.

Electronics & Recovery

As we prepared for the Lone Star Cup, I learned and worked on the electronics and recovery system of our rocket. I worked on validating our redundant flight computer and assembled our recovery system, accounting for the shock cord length and parachute size necessary to ensure the rocket would not damage itself during separation events or landing.

Testing Aurora's Redundant Flight Computer

As part of the manufacturing team, I cut out the slats that the brakes extend through, and internally reinforced the section with a two layer fiberglass layup to compensate for the reduced strength of the section due to the removed material. Beyond this, we worked with the advanced research team to validate and test our airbrakes before launch.

Test Launch & Results

Aurora reached Mach 0.87 and 14,244 feet at the Lone Star Cup. Clearly, we overshot our goal altitude. Unfortunately, once we were at the launch site, we found that the connection from the flight computer to our airbrakes was damaged, so we had to launch without it.

Despite this setback, the flight went otherwise flawlessly. The flight went up stable, and recovery went off without a hitch. We attribute the success of this flight to the improved manufacturing processes that we developed due to the failure of Olympus. Now, we are working hard to ensure our airbrakes are fully functional by IREC this June.

Competition Launch & Results

At the 2026 International Rocket Engineering Competition, Aurora reached Mach 0.85 and 11,792 feet after a flawless flight on the way up.

Aurora on the pad

However, we again overshot our goal altitude, but this time by a smaller margin. Our airbrakes deployed, but only for 0.1 seconds. Since we were unable to test the airbrakes at our test launch, our airbrakes team neglected the change in pressure that would occur from air entering the airbrake slots. The flight computer detected this large pressure change immediately after the airbrakes deployed, assumed we had reached our max altitude, and retracted the airbrakes, causing them to only be active for a fraction of second, thus not slowing us down enough to hit 10,000 feet.

Recovery also had some hiccups. Due to inclement weather, we were unable to recover our rocket for nearly two days. By the time we got the rocket back, two fins on opposite sides of the rocket had come loose. We think this happened for two key reasons. Firstly, since the rocket was unpainted due to weight concerns, the carbon fiber over the fins was completely exposed. After baking in the desert sun for two days, we suspect that the black carbon fiber layup might have absorbed enough heat to delaminate the epoxy. The second factor is that, since this was our first year vacuum-bagging our fins composite layup, we might have pulled out too much epoxy, thus weakening the bond to the airframe overall.

Aurora post-recovery

However, this damage has since been repaired, and Aurora is now functionally in flight-ready condition.

Despite the challenges we faced with Aurora, it was a significant improvement from Olympus' catastrophic flight. Now, as the chief engineer of our 2027 IREC rocket, we're seeking to further improve our processes and results in a new category of competition.