USC Rocket Lab fails to launch rocket into space

The USC Jet Propulsion Laboratory failed to achieve its goal to be the first university group to reach space at the BALLS convention when its rocket, named Traveler, exploded after launch on Friday.

The group said that although they haven’t yet had a successful launch, they have made extensive progress for an undergraduate team.

“We made it further than any student group has ever made it in this process,” said Sarah Cusson, a senior majoring in astronautical engineering who works in launch operations in the rocket lab.

The group plans to launch the rocket again the weekend of Oct. 18 to 20.

Cusson said the rocket’s launch made the USC Jet Propulsion Laboratory the first student group to be granted the clearance to potentially launch a rocket into space, as well as the first student group to launch a potentially space-bound rocket from the launch pad.

The motor of the rocket exploded, ripping the rocket in two when the combustion chamber was over-pressurized. The rocket lab was able to recover almost the entire vehicle, however, and easily determine what needed to be fixed, after the launch.

The group said they will remain positive despite the setback.

“In a failure, you tend to learn more than you do in a success,” said Head of Operations and Global Design Jordan Noone, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering and biophysics.

For example, Noone said they observed interesting things within the motor that are visible when it stops running mid-flight, but generally not visible before or after the flight.

Though the premature vehicle separation prevented the group from testing their recovery systems, Jordan Raice, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering, said he is excited to test the “burrito,” a contraption designed to allow the rocket to descend from space quickly without causing it to break to pieces when it hits the ground, in the next launch.

Raice is the recovery team lead and said the “burrito” is a device that involves a small parachute that allows the rocket to come down quickly from space and a larger parachute (initially wrapped up like a burrito, hence the nickname) to be released at 5,000 feet, allowing the rocket to safely land.

The rocket lab has not designed rockets intended for multiple uses, but the avionics technology the group has worked on is expensive and can be reused in future rockets.

“Really the only improvements that appear to need to be made are to the motor itself,” Raice said.

Dynamics lead John Rising, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, said the group is more excited than ever to complete Traveler.

“We know exactly what happened. We all know the design really, really well,” Rising said. “All of us really want to see it fly. Traveler has always kind of been the ‘white rocket’ in the room, the one that we’ve been just itching to get to see fly. We finally got a launch, which in itself is such a huge accomplishment.”

The rocket lab also gave students a chance to learn about the process of building and launching a rocket, even if the group did not accomplish their main goal.

“The main strength of rocket lab is that everyone is a ‘jack of all trades’ and can be a master at one, whereas in a lot of other projects at this scale, everyone just hones in on their specific trade and doesn’t really get to see the whole big picture,” Rising said. “ It’s also an excellent training ground for engineers in that sense because everyone gets exposed to everything.”

Follow us on Twitter @dailytrojan