Cy Launch is taking the rocketry world one 3D print at a time

Designing rockets as part of the Department of Aerospace Engineering’s Make To Innovate (M:2:I) program takes innovative thinking — and M:2:I’s Cy Launch rocketry team has taken a key step in that direction by creating rockets made totally of 3D-printed pieces.

Cy Launch is preparing for the 2025 NASA Student Launch competition in Huntsville, Alabama, April 30 to May 4, which brings together middle school through college-age rocketry teams from around the nation. It will be the third time the team has entered the competition with a 3D-printed rocket. The team won the 3D-printing award at the competition in 2023, placed second overall in 2024’s competition and won the altitude award for attaining an altitude within one foot of the target of 5,000 feet above ground level.

Each year Cy Launch builds two new rockets and performs at least four demonstration launches prior to the competition. Instead of relying on the more traditional method of using fiberglass material to construct the rockets, which can take a long time to build and leaves little space for error, the team uses almost entirely 3D-printed material. “It is a valid design option, and it does hold up as well as the other manufacturing methods,” says project manager Casey Collins.

The team took their inspiration for fully 3D-printed designs from Relativity Space, a private company that designs and launches full-scale products, and their work in additive manufacturing in the aerospace industry.

Cy Launch’s mission for the Alabama competition is to launch a fully 3D-printed rocket with a payload device to an altitude of 5,500 feet above ground level, 501 feet higher than the team has reached before. They also plan to transmit all payload mission data to a NASA receiver and successfully recover all rocket sections with negligible damage when they return to Earth.

Another major design focus is to include an innovative airbrake system on the rocket, which will feature angled plates that will help the team achieve the targeted apogee altitude (the maximum altitude the rocket will attain) as closely as possible. Each rocket in the competition must also contain an onboard payload and this consists of four “STEMnaut” astronaut figures seated in the capsule near the rocket’s nosecone.

Cy Launch is also incorporating outreach, holding in-person STEM engagement events through school visits with a “physics of rocketry” theme. Collins credits team member Ryen Jennings with playing a key role in those events. “The students get to design their own paper rockets that they launch from straws,” Collins says. “It was a lot of fun to give back and pass on our rocketry passion to students.”