UMass Rocket Team Finishes First in New England in 2025 NASA Student Launch Competition
Content
The UMass Rocket Team, a design and competition team of undergraduates from the College of Engineering, recently finished #8 overall in the 2025 NASA University Student Launch Initiative (USLI) Competition)—and #1 in the New England region. 53 teams competed in USLI, which was held this year on May 4, just north of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
This event marked the culmination of the nine-month-long challenge, in which teams researched, designed, built, and launched their full-scale rockets, attempting to achieve altitudes between 4,000 and 6,000 feet before executing a landing and payload mission. This project allows students to apply classroom knowledge to real-world, aerospace scenarios.
According to the UMass Rocket Team, “This year’s launch vehicle, Howard Ad Astra, reached an altitude of 4,543 feet above ground level during the competition launch at Bragg Farm in Toney, Alabama.”
The team explained that “Our launch vehicle harbored our payload Impact Assessment Navigation and Mission Communication, which was designed to safely retain four STEMNauts within the payload and to transmit eight data points upon landing, which were maximum altitude, landing velocity, maximum G-forces achieved, battery voltage, temperature upon landing, time, orientation, and STEMNaut survival status.”
The team added: “Throughout the year, the team worked diligently in design and testing multiple aspects of the vehicle, from our payload sub-team, to our recovery sub-team, and to our structures sub-team, which led to this achievement.”
In addition, the UMass Rocket Team was featured as on the NASA website as the Image of the Day in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the NASA student launch competition.
The UMass Rocket Team is sponsored by Collins Aerospace, and benefitted from the guidance and expertise of team mentor Howard Greenblatt.
Following their recent success, the team announced the formation of a new liquid propulsion division. This expansion will allow the team to design, build, and launch a liquid bi-propellant rocket engine, with the ultimate goal of competing in the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) in addition to the USLI.