IREC 2026

Our team's first year in the student researched and developed hybrid motor category, and 4th place.

The competition

My third year at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC), the largest rocketry competition in the world, with SEDS RD at ASU. Our team moved up to the harder category of student researched and developed (SRAD) hybrid motor rockets and won 4th place.

The rocket and motor

Our rocket flew on the custom M527 hybrid motor that I developed with Michael Bravo, SEDS RD President. You can read about the motor on the Hybrids Research Capstone page.

Before the competition, we built Cactus Cooler: a 12 ft single-stage fiberglass rocket designed to fly to 7,000 ft at Mach 1.5, as a testbed for the motor performance and our custom avionics.

SEDS RD rockets