Past IREC results

Owned by Yevgeniy Gorbachev (RIT Student)
Jan 22, 2024
5 min read

Abbreviated for entry forms

  • SA Cup 2018 (2017-2018)

    • Name: Third Time’s The Charm (3TTC)

    • Status: Participated

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Flight Results: Had a successful test flight (footage on YouTube). At competition, flight was nominal.

    • Recovery: Vehicle + payload recovery successful 

    • Awards: None, but ranked Top 10 internationally and achieved the highest score in flight performance for 10k COTS

  • SA Cup 2019 (2018-2019)

    • Name: Waterbearer

    • Status: Participated

    • Category: 30k COTS

    • Flight Results: Catastrophic event on pad - motor failure. Vehicle and payload were lost

      • Cavitation in grains that was missed during assembly led to rapid burning, which breached the combustion chamber. Failure mode confirmed via slow-motion video, which matches with known failure mode for the motor that was used. 

    • Recovery: Debris retrieved 

    • Awards: None

  • SA Cup 2020: Canceled

  • SA Cup 2021 (2020-2021)

    • Name: Blackout

    • Status: Participated

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Flight Results: Launched at local site, launch was nominal

    • Recovery: Recovery successful, recovered vehicle and payload

    • Awards: None

  • SA Cup 2022: (2021-2022)

    • Name: VOID

    • Status: Participated

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Apogee: Unknown, could not recover

    • Flight Results: Launched nominally and the payload mission succeeded (Live video streaming). Visually confirmed parachutes deployed nominally

    • Recovery: Unsuccessful due to GPS Rx failure - received stale GPS that was inaccurate. GPS Rx transmitter was not shrink wrapped, impact force dislodged transmitter - Mitigation for this failure mode was confirmed in 2023.

    • Awards: None

  • SA Cup 2023 (2022-2023)

    • Name: KONG

    • Status: Participated

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Apogee: 7415.059 ft

    • Flight Results: Mostly nominal, but high weathercock caused high speed at apogee, cutting recovery harness on coupler tube - which separated the sustainer. Payload ejected, gathered data on force applied to air brakes - however, data was noisy.

    • Recovery: Excessive damage; all launched bodies recovered, but vehicle not in reflyable condition. Recovery harness severed at booster coupler and broken support structure on one fin.

    • Awards: 1st place in Payload SDL Competition

Full history

  • 2014-15 - attempted to build IREC rocket

    • Lost to time

  • 2015-2017 - attempted to build IREC rocket

    • Name: Lazarus

    • Category: N/A

    • Apogee: Unknown

    • Built an L3 rocket, but did not register in the competition

    • Launched September 2017

      • Nominal flight, nominal recovery

  • 2017-2018

    • First year of note

    • Name: Third Time’s The Charm (3TTC)

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Apogee: Unknown

    • Enrolled and competed in IREC

    • Standard rocket - mostly COTS. Nothing novel

    • Partnered with SPEX for payload

      • Essentially a box - it did nothing. Was a cubesat form factor

      • This was deployable payload, which was groundbreaking at the time

    • Had a successful test flight - footage on channel

      • Lots of drift

    • Nominal flight at competition, nominal recovery

      • Camera system did not work at IREC

      • Launched early in the week, got early flier points

      • Payload was never recovered

      • Got good tracking telemetry on the ground but a dust storm rolled in which prevented us from recovering as early, but recovery successful

        • Sandstorm actually dragged payload across the desert 

      • Ranked top 10 overall!

  • 2018-2019; Competed; 30k-COTS; CATO; N/A; COTS motor fault; N/A// Water Bearer

    • Name: Waterbearer

    • Category: 30K COTS

    • We were bolstered by our last performance

    • First attempt at custom body tube, custom transition piece - 5" booster to 6" sustainer

      • Upper stage was wider than the booster

    • Payload was an attempt at ground-hit detection, propulsive soft landing (Soft landing never attempted though, what flew was a box of sensors)

      • This payload was the first attempt at livestreaming

    • 98mm 6-grain motor, N-2000? (N-class)

      • Nicknamed the “Rocket Shredder”

    • Would have gotten us to 30k hitting mach > 2 with burn time of 3 sec

    • Catastrophic event on pad (Blew up)

      • Cavitation in grains that was missed during assembly, lead to rapid burning, breached the combustion chamber

      • This was a defect with the motor manufacturer

        • All other teams (except one) CATO’d

      • In drive - "IREC synchronized incident footage" - slow-mo showing the failure, this is how we validated the failure mode

    • Single bay deploy

      • We used Jolly Logics this year 

    • Vehicle + payload were lost

    • Recovered pieces from the pad

  • 2019-2020; Competition canceled

  • 2020-2021; Competed (launched at local site); 10k-COTS; Nominal; Nominal; N/A; N/A // Blackout

    • Name: Blackout

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Apogee: Unknown

    • Participated in virtual IREC; got some points but didn’t score very highly

    • This rocket was the same rocket that we would have launched in 2020

    • Launched at URRG, nominal launch, recovery nominal

      • We actually scrubbed our first attempt to launch due to issues with the avionics bay - couldn’t get the flight computers to arm. There was a short somewhere in the charge lines

      • Returned after the semester to launch

    • We also had a test launch

      • Drogue got pushed into nose cone on deploy due to a lack of bulkhead; so it caused some damage 

      • Otherwise nominal flight 

    • Payload was inert

      • SPEX was supposed to deliver a payload but did not - ended up launching Genny’s instead 

  • 2021-2022: Competed; 10k-COTS; Nominal; Missing; GPS Rx Failure (mitigation confirmed in 2023); N/A

    • Name: VOID

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Apogee: Unknown - did not recover

    • Launched nominally, payload mission succeeded

      • Received stale GPS packet from both vehicle and payload, bad GPS Rx antenna. (We received packets so transmission antenna was functional)

      • The GPS did not receive tape around the antenna, as is standard practice with BigRedBees. Judges helped us confirm that this is a known failure mode

      • The antennas are ceramic - there’s a pin that pops off after only a few Gs of force. This isn’t listed by the manual; so on takeoff we lost GPS.

      • The same failure mode occurred on the payload - so no recovery

    • Payload was a video live stream

    • Chutes deployed nominally, confirmed via visual observation

    • Recovery failed due to lack of GPS positioning for both the vehicle and the payload 

      • We didn’t have directional antennas on the field, which made it more difficult. (More accurate, we didn’t have the right adapter for the antennas so couldn’t use it)

      • Because we launched on the last day, we only had 6 hours of search time

    • This was the first time we did long range wireless arming 

      • The cameras on the payload were a huge power draw, so we needed to be able to arm them remotely. Made a custom PCB (DARWIN) that could manage arming them remotely. This was a power switch with a radio, in essence. In theory, there was serial passthrough, but this was unused 

      • There was no custom software on the PCB, leveraged internal firmware on the XBEE to get desired behavior

      • We broadcasted at 1 watt not because we didn’t want higher transmit power, but because we would have needed to program in our callsign into the radio module. (Also we didn’t need the extra range). The radio module was capable 2 watts

        • Clover in the air; 16-turn helical on the ground

        • Video was over 5Ghz

    • Got high scores; no awards, however

    • This was the first year we setup and used the ground station to get the telemetry 

      • Livestream was received by an Android phone so the antenna could be mobile

  • 2022-2023: Competed; 10k-COTS; Excessive weathercock; Excessive damage (all recovered); High weathercock caused high speed at apogee, cutting recovery harness on coupler; SDL Payload 1st Place

    • Name: KONG

    • Category: 10k COTS

    • Apogee: 7415.059 ft

    • High weathercock caused high speed at apogee, cutting recovery harness on coupler

    • Attempted (failed) to find booster with engineering camera. Booster found by extrapolating trajectory and walking around.

    • Payload ejected, but main deployed at apogee

      • Didn’t allow for sufficient aerodynamic forces to be applied to air brakes, so the load cell couldn’t collect usable data. Forces were rated below what the load cell would accurately measure

    • Tech report 1st in 10k-COTS, 2nd overall

      • First podium session