Rocket Laboratory

The home to a booster signed by Homer Hickam and seven level-three large-scale rockets, the Rocket Laboratory supports student and faculty research, as well as two highly popular student organizations focused on high-powered rocketry competitions and the development of experimental rocket propulsion subsystems.

Located on the first floor of the Lehman Engineering and Technology Center, the Embry-Riddle Future Space Explorers & Developers Society (ERFSEDS) and the Experimental Rocket Propulsion Lab club (ERPL) utilize the lab to support their overall mission of flying some of the most advanced projects developed at Embry-Riddle.

ERFSEDS

ERFSEDS focuses primarily on the structural design of rockets. Primarily, this entails the design and building of rockets used for competitions and research projects. Students engage in researching and building rockets using CAD and coding programs, composite materials, 3D printing, and various tools to accomplish the tasks ahead. In addition, ERFSEDS also has a solid rocket motor design project where students research and mix a solid rocket motor to be tested. From these projects, students learn various technical skills that are applicable to the engineering industry.

Current and Recent Projects:

• Project Artemis: Two-stage competition rocket competing in the Spaceport America Cup 2024. This project is primarily manufactured in-house with the body tubes being wound on a filament winder. Flies to approximately 30,000 feet!
• Project Trailblazer: Single-stage competition rocket at FAR. Flies to approximately 10,000 feet!
• Project A.C.M.E: Primarily works on manufacturing composites in-house for various projects. Common activities include winding tubes, sanding, cutting material, creating plates of carbon fiber and fiberglass, and more.
• Project Cereberus: Prepares avionics systems for other projects, getting students to have experience with avionics and electronics systems.
• Project Kleos: A research rocket project with the goal of using actively controlled air brakes to achieve a desired altitude.
• Project Prometheus: Researches, design and mixing of in-house solid rocket motors. Prometheus has successfully tested 4 solid rocket motors to date and plans to use their next motor to launch a rocket.
• Project Zephyr: Zephyr is a research project to research, design, and test experimental parachutes using a supersonic rocket platform.

ERPL

ERPL is focused primarily on design, construction, and testing of rocket engines, but students engage in projects in all aspects of rocketry such as flight dynamics and control, instrumentation, composite structures, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), heat transfer, and more. These various areas of development allow ERPL to have 5 active research projects, including Juno, Draco, Cardea, Atlas, and CNC. These projects all work towards the common goal promoting students knowledge of understanding and testing rocket engines.

Current Projects:

• Juno: A bipropellant liquid rocket engine utilizing LOX/Ethanol. This is a 300 lbf modular engine utilizing ablative cooling.
• Draco: A bipropellant feed system capable of supporting one cryogenic propellant. This feed system will be used for Juno and any future engine.
• Cardea: Cardea is the data acquisition (DAQ) team that allows ERPL to control and collect data while testing engines.
• Atlas: Atlas is the structural part of the test stand where all of ERPL’s engines and feed systems are mounted to.
• CNC: CNC works on creating various parts for other projects and utilizes a 5-axis CNC machine to accomplish this.

Recent Projects

• Odyssey: A 500 lbf hybrid rocket engine capable of throttling. This engine was hot fired twice in the fall of 2023. 
• Spectre: Spectre is an actively stabilized rocket utilizing canards and has had multiple successful tests flights.