Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition 2024

IREC, also called the Spaceport America Cup, is the largest intercollegiate rocket competition in the world, held in Spaceport America, New Mexico. 2024 is the second year that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been accepted into the competition.

In my second year as the Avionics Team Lead, I lead the innovative redesign of the rocket's avionics bay to improve ease of use, accessibility, and structural integrity. Accessiblity was improved by implementing an internal switch panel that could be accessed through a door in the rocket's air frame, allowing the avionics bay to be 100% self contained and indepdent of the external air frame. Structurally, the avionics 2024 avionics sleds were designed to screw directly into the airframe, which provides increased rigidity from the 2023 design.

Another undertaking for the 2024 competition was the development airbrakes to better control the rocket's altitude. I designed functional airbrakes that protrude delrin flaps out from the rocket using a servo motor. The servo is controlled with custom flight computer that was also designed by myself and my team. Using an ESP32 and other Adafruit electronics, the flight computer controls the airbrakes by predicting the rocket's apogee and adjusting the flaps accordingly to help reach the target altitude of 10,000 feet. Simultaneously, the computer transmits live data to a ground station module that is used during the recovery process of the rocket.