Flying Squirrel Rising.
A 10,000-foot class sounding rocket designed, built, and flown by undergraduates at Grinnell College. Fiberglass airframe, L-class solid motor, dual-deployment recovery, and a functional vibration-isolation payload — engineered from a small liberal-arts campus to the launch rail at IREC 2026.
We flew.
On June 18, 2026, the Grinnell Rocket Team launched the Flying Squirrel from the IREC field in Midland, Texas — our first flight at the world’s largest collegiate rocket engineering competition. Recovery operations are still in progress; full flight data and results will be posted as soon as we get the rocket back.
First day at IREC.
The Grinnell Rocket Team is so excited to be competing for the first time — under the 10K COTS category. None of this would have been possible without the support of Grinnell College. Special thanks to Maure Smith-Benanti, JC Lopez, and our president Anne Harris. And, of course, to our mentor Lanie Cross — thank you for all the time invested in us and for teaching us so much. As we like to say: Now Pioneers in Flying.
Preparing to fly.
Setting up the altimeter, checking radio communications, and assembling the rocket. A huge shoutout to all team members who have been doing their absolute best to make this dream possible: Harrison Elliott, Carmela Davidson, Eti-Abasi Laurel Edet, Shira Sheppard, and Stephany Ronquillo.
What a day.
The Grinnell Rocket Team had a successful launch. Our first time at IREC and we had a blast. Thank you to all the organizers who provided us the chance to show our capabilities — the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association — and, of course, to our rocketry friends at Cyclone Rocketry for helping us during our launch. We are now Pioneers in Flying.
In the News
Grinnell College NewsGrinnell Rocket Team Lifts OffRead the article →
A first-year team with a disciplined flight plan.
Grinnell is a small liberal-arts college without a dedicated aerospace program. Our team is physics majors, computer scientists, and natural-science students who organized this project as a student-led initiative under faculty oversight. We chose a proven COTS airframe and motor so our limited build time is spent where it matters: quality assembly, thorough ground testing, and careful documentation.
The Flying Squirrel — a conservative, well-understood machine.
Airframe & Structures
Built around the Dominator 4 COTS fiberglass kit — 4-inch filament-wound body tubes, a fiberglass nosecone with a metal tip, and a 54 mm motor mount. Three trapezoidal fiberglass fins bonded through the airframe with J-B Weld Steel Reinforced Epoxy. Fin flutter analysis gives an estimated flutter velocity of 516 m/s — a 122% safety margin over predicted max velocity.
Propulsion
A single AeroTech L1000W-14A single-use solid motor. 75 mm diameter, 2,714 N·s total impulse — well below the IREC 40,960 N·s cap. The L1000W reliably produces the 30.7 m/s rail-departure velocity required on the 5.18 m ESRA rail at our liftoff weight.
Recovery
Single-airframe dual-deployment. Drogue deploys at apogee; main at 500 ft AGL. Two redundant COTS altimeters — AltusMetrum TeleMega v3.0 primary and EasyMini v2.1 backup — command black-powder charges. Simulated touchdown velocity under main: 6.16 m/s.
Payload — Vibration Isolation Experiment
A 2.0 kg functional scientific payload measuring vibration-isolation performance of candidate packaging materials. Four three-axis accelerometer channels arranged radially, each surrounded by a different test material — vibration damping film, closed-cell packing foam, corrugated cardboard, and a bare control.
Avionics & Tracking
TeleMega built-in 70 cm GPS transmitter at 16 dBm. Ground station: AltusMetrum TeleBT receiver, laptop running AltOS, Arrow 3-element Yagi antenna.
Six phases from pad to touchdown.
Single-stage, single-motor, dual-deployment profile. Every transition is guarded by redundant altimeters.
Milestones
Seven students. One rocket.
Undergraduates from physics, computer science, and the natural sciences. No aerospace department, no machine shop — just careful engineering.
Want to build rockets?
You don’t need to be a physics major. You don’t need prior experience. You need to show up, learn a solder iron, and be excited about things that go fast. Right now we’re working on the biggest thing we’ve ever done: IREC 2026.
Sundays · 6PM