Rocketry Recap: 24-25
What a year! It is hard to believe that the 2025 Student Launch season has come to an end — after 9 months of designing, testing, and refining launch vehicle and payload systems for the team’s second year back at USLI. This year, the team worked on two payloads: 1) the NASA-specified payload challenge, to collect data inflight and transmit back on the 2-m radio band, and 2) to develop and implement an air-brakes system, dubbed ADS––active drag system.
Members of the 2024-2025 NASA Student Launch Team that traveled to Huntsville, AL.
Let’s begin where all good stories start: the beginning. When the challenge was announced, we all immediately got onto Slack and commented on what a softball it was compared to last year (see: the glider that never was). Little did we know, this payload would be one of our most complicated to-date, bringing with it many demonstrations. We learned how to yield aluminum stock (better use 3D-printed steel), fry two LightAPRS boards (ouch), and completely redesign the payload during winter break following a blissfuly ignorant PDR with NASA. In the end, the payload antennas deployed and a signal was sent. As instructed by the EEs on the Electrical Subteam, we will not post photos of the PCB(s).
In parallel, the team developed an Active Drag System (ADS). As some readers may know, this not the first time the team has tried such a thing. Records indicate this may be our fourth attempt. We developed, from scratch, a mechanical system validated through static-load bench-top testing, five hours of wind-on tunnel time (see: Wind Tunnel Blog Post), and four flight tests. We also developed a 6-DOF (degree of freedom) trajectory simulator in C to run in-flight to predict the apogee overshoot and compensate with the mechanical system.
In April, the team traveled to Huntsville, Alabama, along with 53 other teams from across the United States and beyond. We presented to NASA and NAR officials, discussed the difficulties of ADS control systems with countless other teams, and watched as our first launch day was scrubbed into oblivion by rain and iron-rich red mud. On the second day, Delphi flew high through a break in the clouds and landed safely less than a half mile away.
The team placed 10th in the 2025 NASA University Student Launch. Check out onboard video from the 2nd Flight Test below.
Flight Test 2 — ADS actuation visible after motor burnout!
I have delayed writing this blog post for weeks now, much to the frustration of our industrious PR chair and Co-Presidents. It is hard to sum up in a short post how much this team has grown, not only this year, but in the four years I’ve known it. From a rag-tag group of freshmen and seniors launching in rural Wisconsin to a slightly less rag-tag group, spanning all ages and disciplines, still launching in Wisconsin, and still having a damned-good time. I have worn a lot of hats in my time here––safety officer, blog writer, chief engineer––but my favorite of all is a faded black baseball hat that reads NUSTARS in white letters in a typeface nearly a decade old. This project, this place, these people—they have become a welcome home for me, and I know I will miss them all.
Go flight. Go NUSTARS.
