The Aerospace Engineering student organization that was named Newcomer Club of the Year is now taking aim at another accomplishment: taking part in the world’s largest college rocket competition.
First-year Iowa State club Cyclone Rocketry (CyROC) is designing and building a rocket to be part of the Spaceport America Cup in Las Cruces, NM in June, 2018. Donations are being sought to help the group raise sufficient funds to cover the cost of construction and travel to the week-long competition hundreds of miles from Iowa State. Visit the funding page on the Iowa State University Foundation web site to help make this goal possible. Various levels of funding are available for donors to choose from. The fundraising project will end April 30.
Cyclone Rocketry will compete against more than 100 teams from around the world in the second-ever Spaceport Americas Cup. CyROC’s competition rocket is named Invictus, after the poem by William Ernest Henley. The group will compete in a division which calls for use of a commercial off-the-shelf motor to reach an apogee (highest point from the earth) of 10,000 feet. Invictus will be approximately 15 feet tall and six inches in diameter. The airframe will mainly consist of carbon fiber. A student-designed automated airbrake system will attempt to slow the rocket to properly reach the required apogee. Invictus will carry a payload of real-time science equipment measuring static charge on the rocket’s airframe during flight.
Cyclone Rocketry Club was formed in 2017. In February, 2018 it was named Newcomer Club of the Year at Iowa State. Read about that and get more information on the club here.