UMass Rocket Team Excels in International Competition Debut

Content

Competing against more than 140 university teams from around the world, the UMass Amherst Rocket Team finished 12th overall in its first appearance at the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC), one of the world's largest and most prestigious collegiate rocketry competitions.

Hosted annually by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), IREC challenges student teams to design, build, and launch high-powered sounding rockets that safely and accurately reach target altitudes while meeting rigorous engineering, safety, and flight requirements. This year's competition, held in Midland, Texas, brought together teams from universities across North America, Europe, Asia, and South America.

UMass competed in the 10,000-foot Commercial Off-the-Shelf (10k COTS) category, which requires teams to use commercially available rocket motors while designing and building nearly every other aspect of the vehicle. The team finished 8th in the 10k COTS category, 12th overall across all competition categories, and 2nd in the Northeast United States, with an official score of 938.97.

“The team's first appearance at IREC exceeded our expectations,” said Brigid Duffy ‘26, outgoing president of the UMass Rocket Team. “Everyone on the team, along with our mentor and flyer of record, is very pleased with the overall performance. We learned an incredible amount this year that will inform our future strategy.” 

As Duffy graduates, leadership of the Rocket Team will pass to incoming president Andrew Magner.

Unlike many traditional engineering competitions, IREC evaluates teams on far more than launch success alone. Scoring includes technical reports, design reviews, build quality, flight performance, and safety practices, rewarding excellence throughout the entire engineering process.

The team's rocket successfully reached its 10,000-foot target altitude, capping off months of design, manufacturing, testing, and preparation. The project incorporated extensive student-developed experimental technology, including live telemetry, a modular additively manufactured booster section, student-manufactured parachutes, and air braking controls.

The performance marks an important milestone for the student organization, which entered IREC for the first time this year, and establishes the UMass Rocket Team as a rising competitor in collegiate rocketry. The result builds on the team’s recent success in national competitions, including an eighth-place overall finish—and first place in New England—at the 2025 NASA University Student Launch Initiative (USLI).