UCI Rocket Project Places First in International Competition
July 7, 2025 - The UCI Rocket Project Solids came in first place in their category at the 2025 International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC), the premier competition for universities around the world. The category they competed in — the 10,000 feet Student Researched And Designed (SRAD) category — is one of the most difficult as it requires students to design and build the rocket’s motor.
“It was amazing for us to come out first among other huge aerospace universities from around the world,” said project manager Bryan Vu, who just graduated with an aerospace engineering degree. More than 143 student teams from 22 countries competed in Midland, Texas in June for IREC. The teams are scored on how close they are to their goal apogee as well as engineering design, safety and mission objectives. This is the second year that the UCI Rocket Project Solids competed and the first time they designed the entire rocket themselves.
“The most challenging aspect of this contest was one we took on intentionally, which was designing our own motor,” said the team’s chief engineer Abel Bernal, who graduated in aerospace engineering and is interning at Parker. Out of the 143+ teams, thirteen universities competed in this category.
They created a sugar motor with sorbitol as fuel and potassium nitrate as the oxidizer. “We melted down the grain and casted it. We did a lot of static tests and went to the Mojave Desert eight times,” said Vu. As sugar is volatile, they expected it to have 700 PSI, the force in pounds per square inch, and designed their motor to withstand 2000 PSI to ensure it met their factor of safety.
Their first test launch went off perfectly earlier this year, but the parachutes did not deploy as intended leading to a ballistic recovery, where the rocket hit the ground and broke. The team had to scramble and rebuild everything within a month.
They also took on the challenge of engineering the payload, the object the rocket carries. The team created a robotic arm, that could pick up and store things as they controlled it with a remote. It was put inside a four-unit cubesat structure and went up in the rocket and returned fully functional without a hitch.
The UCI Rocket Project Solids team has 28 members that became a very tight-knit community. “Because of the project, we’ve become close friends and that allowed us to work efficiently together and have fun,” said Vu.
Vu credits their success to the team’s passion and dedication. “They have put so many hours into the project, sometimes all night when we had critical deadlines. Whenever something failed, we’d find a solution for it.”
The team is grateful for their advisors including Mark Walter, UCI professor of teaching of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who gave them insights into engineering designs and Rick Maschek of the Friends of Amateur Rocketry who showed them how to make the propellant
“Being on this project has completely changed the trajectory of my life,” said Vu who led the winning team. “When I first came to UCI, I didn’t know much about rockets at all. Now I’m extremely passionate about space, have interned at multiple rocket companies, and want to work in rockets and satellites in industry.” Vu is now interning as a manufacturing engineer at Blue Origin in Florida.
They also won the Best Video Challenge for this video of the team produced by aerospace engineering major Adrian Pascua.
Next year’s team will be led by Antoine Nguyen, who led operations and is now interning at L3Harris. When he joined, Nguyen said he was inspired by the community of welcoming people. “They welcomed so much learning and passion,” Nguyen. “We have set really high bars for our performance. We’re planning onboarding and research to do even better next year.” It looks like the UCI Rocket Project will continue to launch winning rockets and careers for years to come.
- Natalie Tso
