University of Alberta Student Team for Alberta Rocketry Research

The Student Team for Alberta Rocketry Research (STARR) is a team of like-minded students from a wide array of disciplines and faculties who have come together with the common goal of expanding Alberta’s space industry through the development, testing, and launching of high-altitude sounding rockets. Our mission is to provide experience for students in developing launch vehicles, educate the public through outreach activities, and promote STEM to students across Alberta.

Our team has launched a total of 5 rockets since our start in 2018. Recently, at STARR’s first international appearance at IREC 2024, our team finished 3rd in the COTS category, and 6th overall. Competing in the 10K COTS challenge this rocket hit an incredibly accurate altitude of 9,964 ft with a fully nominal flight and recovery. Coming back to Canadian soil for Launch Canada 2024, we built Ringo III. This Rocket featured a completely student-manufactured carbon fiber airframe, coupler and nose cone. Additionally, it incorporated our Biome payload with electronically activated stabilizing grid fins. Between our impressive circuitry and our state of the art payload, we ended up winning the competition and were awarded 1st overall in all categories we participated in. This was a huge step forward for the team, as we were recognized for all the hard work and dedication that went into the development of this rocket. 

“This team started out last year with a whole host of challenges they needed to overcome from the time of their flight safety inspection and worked tirelessly to get off the rail. This year, the improvement in the team was really visible and it was awesome seeing how far they have come.” - Adam Trumpour, President of Launch Canada

This upcoming year at Launch Canada 2026 we are planning to launch a two-stage rocket named Albireo after the binary gold and blue double star. This rocket is our first two stage rocket therefore we are planning to keep it simple and focus on developing functional systems before chasing exceptional speed or altitude. We are aiming to reach an altitude of ~35,000 feet and speeds of greater than Mach 2. Albireo will carry a student-developed 3U CubeSat payload that will be ejected from the airframe at apogee. Inspired by the 2027 NASA Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon, Titan, this payload builds on Ringo IV’s ‘BIOME’ payload as part of a 5-year project to be taken on by STARR. This rocket poses many new challenges for our team and will test our abilities, helping us push to learn more about the mysteries of sounding rocketry. 

The main subteam that uses PCBs is the Avionics Bay subteam. Below are 2 of our student researched and developed boards:

1. Live Telemetry

The role of live telemetry is to receive sensor data and relay it to the ground station during flight. The board uses the Semtech SX1276 LoRa modulation peripheral for encoding and decoding 915 MHz radio. It also boasts connectors for multiple communication standards, namely USB-C, CAN, and USART which it uses to communicate with sensor peripherals and our ground station computer. (Seen in image attached)

2. SRAD GPS

Our GPS board employs the use of the MAX-M10S GPS chip that automatically connects to satellites and gathers position data. The GPS chip then sends this information in the form of NMEA sentences over I2C lines to the brain of my chip: The STM32 Microcontroller. This is where the sentence is broken down and sent via ROCKET-CAN to our Live Telemetry board.

STARR would greatly appreciate and benefit from the support of PCBWay. With STARR constantly trying to push the limits of student rocketry, avionics are a key component in all our endeavours. Especially for our first two-stage competition rocket, Albireo, prototypes of our boards will allow us to achieve our team’s goals and build valuable skills for the real world. 

The support of PCBWay will let STARR continue to innovate and grow interest in Canada’s aerospace industry. We look forward to and are grateful for the opportunity for PCBWay’s sponsorship!