Schulich engineers aim for the stars with innovative rocket-building projects
By Nazeefa Ahmed, November 11 2024—
The University of Calgary’s Schulich School of Engineering has reached new heights — literally — with its student-led rocket club, SOAR, which is breaking barriers in the field of amateur rocket science. With a focus on hybrid rockets, the team is pushing the limits of aerospace technology and aims to break the altitude record for a hybrid rocket in North America.
“We are targeting 100,000 feet, going much higher, much faster and much bigger than we have to date,” said Lucas Kobler, program director for SOAR in an interview with the Gauntlet.
Almost all of the manufacturing is in house, with electrical, software and mechanical engineers working within six distinct subteams. From optimizing the structure of the rocket to testing the hybrid motor, the final rocket is a product of various fields of engineering expertise converging to create a seamless, high-performance vehicle. Kobler, a mechanical and aerospace engineering student, works with club executives to form a Quality Control Plan (QCP) for the rockets, maintaining high-quality standards throughout the design process.
A deep dive into the design process
The team now specializes in hybrid rockets that use solid fuel and liquid propellants. A propellant is a chemical substance that is used to create thrust, typically by being burned or otherwise reacting to release gas that rapidly expands. The force of the expanding gas creates movement. In hybrid models, the solid fuel is kept separate from the liquid propellant, until they are mixed together in the combustion chamber.
The rockets are tested by the avionics team, which specializes in both hardware and software components. The hardware includes designing the boards that hold sensors and provide power to the machinery collecting meaningful data for future changes. The software engineers write the code that logs the sensor data.
“We provide all of the data collection and control while on the ground and in the air,” said Jayden Sorensen, vice president software for SOAR and fifth-year electrical engineering student.
Sorensen, at mission control, must find a way to communicate with and control the rocket at the testing site.
“While the rocket is fully loaded and pressurized on the pad, we are a kilometre away,” said Sorensen. “We need to be getting data back and forth and that comes down to the software team.”
The group also ensures that their time at high altitudes is meaningful. Last year, the group worked with Amino Labs to study microbial life in the upper atmosphere. The goal is to understand what atmospheric particles can reveal about conditions and changes occurring on the ground. During tests, the group would collect air samples while the rockets were up in the atmosphere.
“Commercially, payload is the reason why rockets of this type fly,” said Aiden Ballard, rocket captain and third year mechanical engineering student. “We want to make sure we are doing something scientifically useful while we are up there.”
To be able to transport these sampling instruments, known as payloads, the team needed to account for weight and size as well as any protection the equipment would need.
Transitioning from solid to hybrid rockets
Spanning almost a decade, SOAR has a rich history of passionate students and instructors who have dedicated their skills and creativity to advancing aerospace technology. Initially under the Department of Physics, the group was a high altitude science team focusing on atmospheric pollutants in Dr. Johansen’s Aero-Core Lab. The team would attach small, cube-shaped satellites (CubeSats) to balloons and release them into the atmosphere to collect air samples. Because the group had developed skills in building devices designed to fly at high altitudes, they tried building their first Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) solid fuel rocket for the 2016 SpacePort America Cup in New Mexico.
Just a year later, a separate team of Schulich engineering students challenged themselves to build a hybrid rocket motor for a capstone project. While hybrid rockets have many benefits, such as more control and customizable performance, they are more complex than solid rockets, requiring both fuel tanks and oxidizer tanks and valves. This complexity can increase costs and introduce more challenges.
Yet, the capstone team collaborated with SOAR and Atlantis Research Labs to create Atlantis I, the team’s first hybrid rocket designed to reach 30,000 feet. While the team was unable to fly the rocket during the competition, it successfully launched after undergoing updates afterward.
Then began some of the challenges the team faced, from the pandemic stopping the club’s progress to problems with parts. As a club that builds and designs in house, SOAR was hindered by the shutdown of the U of C in 2020.
“We weren’t able to build anything for 10 months,” said Kobler, who has been with SOAR for six years.
To regain momentum post-pandemic, the team returned to solid rockets, designing and flying DinoSOAR in Alberta and OSPREY I at the Spaceport competition. After the success of the two, the team built another hybrid rocket Ouroboros, which, after rigorous testing, failed to fly in competition.
“We had the rocket filled with propellant, on the rail, we had the ignition system go off, [but] our main valve failed,” said Lukas Kobler. “That was definitely a low point for the team but we took what we learned from that competition and designed a new valve.”
The team tested the rocket in the lab for a full year and returned to New Mexico in 2024, winning their category at the competition.
As SOAR recruits new members for the winter semester to work on their latest rocket, Ballard has a message for aspiring engineers looking to join the team.
“We’re looking for people who aren’t afraid to dive head-first into a challenge.”
With such a dedicated team and innovative projects, SOAR is set to continue pushing the boundaries of what student-led engineering can achieve.
To learn more about SOAR and their application process, visit their website.