A team from Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University’s Rocket Development Lab successfully launched their rocket at this year’s International Rocket Engineering Competition, the world’s largest university rocket engineering competition.

The team placed 43rd in the competition’s 10,000-foot Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) division and 64th overall. They also earned fourth place in the Barrowman Award for accuracy by predicting their rocket’s maximum altitude.

The 2025 International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) was held June 9-14 at Spaceport Midland, Texas. Sponsored by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), the competition challenges student teams from around the world to design and build rockets with target altitudes of 10,000, 30,000 or 45,000 feet.

This was the second consecutive year that the Prescott Campus team from the Rocket Development Lab (RDL) —  a student-led organization that provides tools and resources for undergraduates to build, test and launch rockets — participated in the competition. The group receives support from Embry‑Riddle’s Undergraduate Research Institute (URI) and the College of Engineering.

“I’ve treasured both years I’ve gone to IREC,” said Shea Schmidt, an Aerospace Engineering senior on the Astronautics track. “The competitive atmosphere and environment of challenge are baked into the process, and it’s absolutely worth participating.”

Members of the team recover their rocket after a successful launch at IREC 2025. (Photo: Embry‑Riddle/Mark Benton)

The team built their approximately six-foot rocket entirely from scratch around a prefabricated, four-inch solid propellant rocket motor. The system incorporated an active air-braking system to regulate altitude and carried a scientific payload to capture flight data and live video.

“The major improvement from last year was the incorporation of the air braking system,” said Mark Benton, associate professor of aerospace engineering and the team’s faculty advisor. “This year’s rocket was also significantly lighter.”

Post-flight analysis confirmed the air brakes worked with remarkable precision. The rocket reached 9,756 feet, just 44 feet shy of the team’s 9,800-foot prediction. That margin of error — only 0.45% — secured the team’s 4th place finish in the Barrowman Award standings.

“The competition was a lot of hard work,” said team member Calvin Lindemann, a Cyber Intelligence and Security undergraduate from Boise, Idaho. “But it was really rewarding.”

Lindemann, who graduates in December, contributed to the rocket’s flight software. “A project of this scale really limits the number of test flights you can conduct,” he said. “We had to find other ways of testing our system.”

The team developed a hardware-in-the-loop testing system that simulated flight, allowing the rocket computer to operate as if it were in the air.

“Over the course of development and testing, we ran upward of 300 test flights, uncovering bugs and allowing us to dial in our control system tuning.” Lindemann added. “Now that we know how to do hardware-in-the-loop testing, it’ll be a core component of future rocketry projects.”

The Texas heat also played a role in the rocket’s performance. The sun beat down on the outer wall of the rocket, contributing to temperatures inside the payload bay reaching 145 degrees Fahrenheit. This caused the chipset to overheat, said Shea, who is from South Park, Colorado and is also set to graduate at the end of the semester.

“It’s another thing to see real effects act on a product,” he said. “For this reason, little else has prepared me for my engineering courses as well as participating in IREC.”

The team is already applying lessons learned from this year’s competition to next year’s design. Improvements will focus on avionics, redundant sensors, refined control algorithms and stronger actuators.

“Lessons were learned,” said Schmidt. “I am now motivated to improve the system hardware for next year’s team.”

The IRE 2025 Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical Solids Flight Team

  • Chase Ahrens, Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics), Team Lead
  • Dhanush Balusa, Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics)
  • Constance Brainerd, Mechanical Engineering (Energy)
  • Bryce Chanes, ERAU Prescott Alumnus (’18), ESRA volunteer and Flyer of Record
  • Michael Di Nisco, Mechanical Engineering (Propulsion)
  • Ben Lambertson, Aerospace Engineering (Aeronautics)
  • Calvin Lindemann, Cyber Intelligence and Security
  • Nithya Pattamatta, Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics)
  • Shea Schmidt, Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics)
  • Quentin Trull, Mechanical Engineering (Robotics)
  • Arushi Vadali, Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics)
  • Gavin Wellonen, Mechanical Engineering (Propulsion)
  • Kevin Wise, Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics)
  • Professor Mark Benton, Team Faculty Advisor and Mentor