Open Meeting Announcement

November 13th at 18:00 in S1|03 223

Rocketry and Propulsion in Darmstadt

RAPID - Rocket Team

rapid_logo_dark

Lead

Jonas Klein and Manuel Schlüsener

Meeting

Tuesday at 17:00 in L1|01-K367

Email

rocket@tudsat.space

The Rapid Team (Rocketry and Propulsion in Darmstadt) has set the goal of developing, building, and operating its sounding rockets.

The focus is on deepening the theoretical knowledge taught in lectures at TU Darmstadt and expanding it to include a practical component. The complex overall system “rocket” is ideally suited to imparting content to our members and indispensable cooperation in an interdisciplinary team. 

Frodo Render in sky

Current Rocket Development:

The Fantastic Rocket of Darmstadt Origin, FRoDO, is our newest rocket generation. Our goal with the FRoDO rockets is to participate in international student rocketry competitions such as the European Rocketry Challenge (EuRoC). At EuRoC, which is promoted and organized by the Portuguese Space Agency, the competing student teams launch their rockets to heights of 3000 m and 9000 m.

The FRoDO rockets use solid propellant rocket motors and are designed to carry several payloads, such as CanSats.

The latest rocket, FRoDO-M was launched at the 2024 edition of the European Rocketry Challenge to an apogee of 2993.7 m. The team is proud to have secured third place in the overall ranking of the competition. FRoDO-M uses a bi-directional cold-gas thruster system to precisely control the apogee height as close to the 3000 m as possible. A total of 2 kg payloads in form of 4 CanSats were transported in the rocket.

The FRoDO-J rocket was launched to a height of 983 m in September 2023. In addition to a more sophisticated dual stage recovery system and updated avionics, this rocket was able to carry 3 CanSat payloads to the apogee. Furthermore, the materials and the manufacturing methods used were improved to withstand the increased loads during flight and landing.

The first demo rocket of this generation, FRoDO-H, made two successful flights to 400 m at the end of 2022 and has been used as a test platform for subsystems and manufacturing methods.

Long term project:

The long term goal of the rocket team is the development of an experimental rocket powered by a specifically developed liquid propellant rocket engine. The propellants used are ethanol and nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. These represent a suitable compromise between performance and easy and safe handling. A engine testbench for that purpose is currently beeing build.

Curious?

We are still looking for motivated students of all disciplines and semesters to join us on our mission! For more details, check out our subsections and projects.

Or you just drop by one of our meetings without obligation. Our weekly project meeting takes place every Tuesday at 17:00 at Campus Lichtwiese or on our Discord server. In case of any questions, feel free to contact our sectionleads Jonas or Manu via rocket@tudsat.space or Discord.

Want to support us?

Are you or your company interested in supporting the team and the current projects? We're dedicated to building sustainable partnerships industry and academic institutions. By partnering with us, you’ll help drive innovation, support STEM education, and contribute to the future of aerospace.
If you are interested, please reach out to us at launch@tudsat.space.