University of Pennsylvania High Power Rocketry Team

The University of Pennsylvania High-Power Rocketry Team (HPR) is an undergraduate student-led organization committed to designing, constructing, and launching high-powered rockets. The team provides a hands-on, collaborative environment for students across disciplines to engage in engineering challenges, gain practical experience, and contribute to aerospace development at Penn. We ultimately hope to compete in the 2025-2026 International Rocket Engineering Competition(IREC). Following the successful flights at the 2024 and 2025 IRECs, this year’s project marks our third competition entry, once again competing in the 10,000 ft COTS category. 

This year’s project represents a significant leap in technical ambition and team maturity. Our mission is to field a competitive vehicle and build a strong foundation for a long-lasting rocketry group at Penn, enabling future members to engage in increasingly advanced projects. Some goals for this year’s project include custom-designed and fabricated components, a restructured payload deployment system, the integration of airbrakes, and onboard avionics for payload control and data collection.

PCBWay’s support would allow us to accelerate our development process and enhance the precision of our custom-designed components, particularly in areas such as avionics and airframe integration. With access to high-quality PCB fabrication and assembly services, we can prototype and test complex electronic systems more efficiently, including our flight computers, sensor arrays, and payload control boards. This support would not only improve the reliability and performance of our rocket’s avionics, but also help our members gain valuable hands-on experience with professional manufacturing workflows

Throughout the year, the team iteratively refines design choices in response to simulation data, manufacturing constraints, and team capacity. Here are some progress pictures from last year’s project, and our 2024-2025 rocket, Project NABI, on the launchpad at the IREC competition.