An autonomous flight computer, a multi-condition apogee detector and a staged, explosive-free recovery system for a student-built rocket aiming for 3–5 km. The ejected payload samples the atmosphere on the way down while live GPS guides the team to both landing sites.
Illustrative profile for a ~4 km flight, played at 2× speed. Real timing will come from the mechanical team's flight simulation and ground tests.
Payload deployment and recovery are the most common failure points in student rocketry. Each choice below answers one of them.
Problem: explosive charges are hazardous to handle, corrode nearby electronics and face strict lab restrictions.
A low-power servo latch or spring release unlocks the nose cone from the inside, driven by an opto-isolated MOSFET channel.
Problem: releasing payload and rocket chutes at the same moment tangles lines and causes mid-air collisions.
The payload leaves first under its own chute. The rocket's main chute follows 1.5 seconds later, once the payload has cleared.
Problem: desert wind carries hardware kilometres away, and small parts vanish in the sand.
Rocket and payload each carry GPS and a LoRa radio, streaming coordinates to a ground station laptop with an offline map.
The mechanical team builds the motor, airframe and fins, which keep the rocket passively stable. Everything inside is ours.
Firmware: Askar Alhajri
Hardware: Meshari Alajaji · Firmware: Askar Alhajri
Build: Turki Alotaibi
Build: Turki Alotaibi
Design: Meshari Alajaji
Lead: Ibrahim Shafi
Eject too early and the parachutes tear off at speed. Too late, and the lines tangle or the rocket falls too far. So the flight computer waits for several independent signals to agree.
The computer logs at 100 Hz and watches the accelerometer for the launch spike.
Apogee detection stays locked out until the motor burns out, so pressure noise at high speed can't fake an apogee.
Barometer and accelerometer are fused to track altitude and vertical speed as the rocket slows.
Channel 1 opens the nose latch and the payload ejects under its own parachute.
Channel 2 fires 1.5 s later. Both bodies descend and stream GPS to the ground.
Two independent electrical systems, one in the rocket and one in the payload, each reporting by radio to the ground.
Fall 2026 · design & bench test
Sensing, release designs and GPS tracking; agree dimensions and latch clearances with the mechanical team.
Regulators, MOSFET drivers and sensor breakouts; verify the barometric code tracks altitude cleanly.
Circular 2-layer board; flight state machine, ejection timing and GPS routines.
Feed simulated altitude profiles to the flight computer and confirm the latch fires on cue.
Spring 2027 · build, test & fly
Fabricate and solder the avionics boards in the university lab.
Build the capsule, range-test the LoRa link, finish the map interface.
Vacuum-chamber pressure drops; ground ejection tests with the mechanical team.
Open-air flight at the desert site; track and recover both bodies, pull the logs.
Atmospheric data analysis, final report and the university exhibition.
Trajectory and ascent models in MATLAB/Simulink, recovery timing verification, and the interface with the mechanical team.
Teensy 4.1 firmware, altitude estimation and apogee detection, flash logging and safety watchdogs.
Power distribution, opto-isolated MOSFET firing stage and the circular avionics PCB.
Atmospheric payload capsule, GPS and LoRa telemetry, and the Python ground station.
Abdullah Albeloshi (team leader), Hadi Alsadah, Mohammed Alkhalifa, Saad Alsaleem
Dr. Ahmed Abul-Hussain (EE) · Dr. Zeeshan Rana (ME) · Dr. Ahmad Baroutaji (ME co-advisor)