Project Overview

Due to the pandemic, this years Spaceport America Contest had to be cancelled. However, the team anticipates competing in the 10,000 category in 2021.  We will continue our goal of creating custom made carbon fiber body tubes as well as several new enhancements to our avionics, camera bay, recovery systems, and a custom payload built by the RIT Spex team.  We aim to not only achieve a successful launch, but also leave the competition victorious!

Project Updates

June 2020 - Because of the pandemic the team has had to put our manufacturing on hold. Depending on RIT policy in the fall, our main goal is resume manufacturing of the rocket in the fall and have a superior rocket with the gained manufacturing time.

Design Information
FDR Presentation

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Structure 

The purpose of the body tubes and nose cone is to house the inner components of the rocket while providing aerodynamic stability throughout the flight.  For the IREC 2021 rocket the following unique considerations were made:

• Carbon fiber body tube 
• Carbon fiber boat tail 
• Carbon fiber nose cone

​We will be able to manufacture the body tubes with the use of the X-Winder 4-Axis Winding Machine. For the nose cone we plan on manufacturing the design with a layup method. 

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Booster

The lower section of the rocket, the booster, has multiple parts; motor retainer, fin can, and main parachute. The main goal of the booster it to secure and center the motor and motor casing.
The motor retainer is a two-piece design 

• “Bulkhead” piece is epoxied to the very bottom of the rocket 
• “Retainer” piece is secured to Bulkhead using 8 fasteners 

​The fin can utilizes a 3D Printed design that will “clamp” onto the fins during installation using an interference fit. The assembly is not meant to be load bearing and is only for alignment purposes.

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Avionics 

For the 2021 IREC rocket our avionics team has been hard at work creating our own flight computer. The team has designed the S.I.R.I.U.S board (Significantly Improved Rocket Information Unification System) and the T.R.A.Q board (Telemetry of Rocket Actively Quantified).
The S.I.R.I.U.S board gives us:

• Real-Time Telemetry: 
  • Barometric Pressure / Temperature
  • Altitude
  • GPS Location
  • Acceleration
• Deployment of Parachutes
• Payload Deployment
• Data-logging

The T.R.A.Q board is responsible for

• Receiving data from S.I.R.I.U.S.
• Data logging
• Data Display
• Using data for recovery of rocket

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Camera & Switches 

Another unique part of this years rocket is ​the mechanical arming switches and the embedded cameras.
The four RunCam Split 3s cameras are mounted in an enclosure inside the rocket to reduce aerodynamic drag while still getting a good view while capturing footage at 1080p and 60fps.

The Remove Before Flight (RBF) pins allow arming and disarming of the rocket by pull-pins on the pad. Theses custom switches, manufactured by Jim Heaney, gives the team fast, reliable, inexpensive, and reversible arming switches.

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Sabot & Payload

For this years rocket we are collaborating with RIT SPEX to develop and create a custom payload and sabot. The 3U Cubesat, with 9lb flight weight, will deploy at apogee to test protein folding under flight conditions.

The sabot design is the same as the 2019 iteration. It will consist of spring-loaded carbon fiber 3D printed components. The sabot provides us with a mechanical device to launch the payload and trigger safety switches on the payload.