STES specializes in crafting Sounding Rockets for launch at the Spaceport America Cup, hosted by ESRA, the world's largest intercollegiate rocketry competition. In June 2019, STES achieved a remarkable #29 global ranking, competing among prestigious institutions. Their mission involves forming a team of passionate future engineers, building rockets capable of propelling 4kg payloads to significant altitudes, and ensuring safe recovery. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the flight event, prioritizing international student safety. Now, they prepare for the virtual 2021 event and the 2022 flight event, focusing on student-designed and constructed components, including propulsion, structures, avionics, recovery, and payload systems.
The project focuses on designing a 10,000 ft height target high power rocket to participate in SAC, carrying a particle physics payload that detects cosmic ray background radiation using Cosmicwatch - an opensource project developed by MIT.
The project also includes a data aqusition unit to record important flight data locally using an inhouse design flight computer.