Icarus

Our vision is to build up a pathway to sub-orbital launch in Indiana giving the opportunity for students and researchers to set their aspirations sky high. We will lower the cost of sounding rockets by implementing student developed technology and prioritizing reusability.

Our latest rocket flight, Icarus Alpha, was the first flight of our new rocket architecture called Theseus. This rocket flew to nearly 8,000ft and hosted a microgravity experiment created by Purdue Students in AAE 418. Now that this rocket has flown and has been recovered it can be flown again on a future Icarus mission.

This year design has begun on a two stage rocket that will build on the Theseus Architecture. This airframe has completed preliminary design as of Spring 2025.

In addition to building custom airframes our Icarus team also includes two specialized projects.

Our Propulsion team is hard at work this year to design, cast, and test a solid rocket motor that will fly in the Theseus airframe. This involves heavy collaboration with Purdue’s own Zucrow Laboratories.

Our Guidance, Navigation, & Control team is working to downsize their attitude control technology to become flight ready in the future. They are planning to create a roll control system to stabilize the spin of a rocket during flight. This will involve mechanical redesign to downscale the current prototype. They are also developing GNC systems to orient high altitude balloons for our Hapsis Program.

Hapsis

Higher, Faster, Further is the persistent pursuit of the Hapsis team. This team utilizes commercial components in an innovative balloon-launched rocket mission concept to chase altitude records. Due to the lower atmospheric density at higher altitudes, our architectures will be able to reach greater heights with smaller rockets by using high altitude balloons.

This year our team had the incredible opportunity to visit Friends of Amateur Rocketry in the Mojave Desert in California to attempt our first ever rocket balloon launch called Hapsis I. And while that mission did not go as planned we learned more about how to prepare for our future missions.

This year the Hapsis team is focusing on an even larger and more exiting mission, Hapsis II. This mission will include a larger rocket and balloon, looking to finally gain altitude from the decreased air density. Additionally new developments in our avionics, recovery, and deployment systems will have to be made.