Project Overview
Project Aether was developed and launched in the 10K COTS category at the 2026 International Rocket Engineering Competition. At 11 feet tall, it flew on an Aerotech M2500T to an apogee of 10,404 ft.
The vehicle's airframe was a 6-inch diameter fiberglass tube, manufactured in-house with a wet-layup of 8.5 oz fiberglass E-cloth on a metal mandrel. Aether's redundant dual-deploy recovery system was designed to ensure the safe return of the vehicle and payload.
After a successful flight and recovery, AURA placed 25th out of 141 teams from around the world, a significant year-over-year improvement from the previous year's IREC.
Payload
The primary goal of Aether's payload was to measure a portion of the earth-ionosphere waveguide electromagnetic field profile covered by the vehicle's flight path. The team used an additional ground based VLF receiver as a reference measurement for post-flight analysis.