EPFL Rocket Team

About the Team

The EPFL Rocket Team is a project composed of students from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

It aims to build a rocket capable of ejecting a scientific experiment as part of the Spaceport America Cup, the largest student rocketry competition in the world. This competition takes place every year, in June, in New Mexico (USA) and is followed by references in the aerospace industry such as Boeing, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

The teams lining up at the competition in 2018

What we have achieved

Last summer, after only two participations, we finished in the top 10 of our category on 52 teams with Project Eiger, and the year before we won the "Jim Furfaro Award for Technical Excellence" with Project Matterhorn, a prize awarded to a team on 124 participants who demonstrated the best mastery and understanding of the technologies developed in the rocket.

The Eiger rocket at its presentation at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

The EPFL Rocket Team in the New Mexico desert for the competition in 2019

The Eiger rocket launched at the competition in 2019

The Bella Lui Rocket

This year, we want to build upon those success with "Project Bella Lui", a 4-meter, 40-kilogram rocket that will be propelled to an altitude of 10,000 feet (3048 meters) with a hybrid engine developed by students from the team, before ejecting an experiment: a life sensor analyzing the behavior of yeast in harsh conditions.

The success of this ambitious project depends on the support of our sponsors. We are already collaborating with companies such as RUAG Space, Sauber Aerodynamics, Faulhaber, and APCO Technologies, which finance us and advise us on the technical aspects of the project.

Our partner are benefiting from an important visibility on the EPFL campus. We participate in many events on the campus (Association Week, Technology and Innovation Fair and Forum EPFL at the Swiss Tech Convention Center, EPFL Open days and other events on campus) where our sponsors are brought forward. We also attend many events outside the campus in Switzerland and abroad (Rockets launches, ESA Open Day…).

Supporting this project is also a great way to reach passionate, talented and ambitious engineers.

The project is followed by many media and also by the EPFL press service (Mediacom), which regularly publishes articles about us.

This project train future engineers to the complex projects they could meet in their future careers.

Some of our PCBs :

The Avionics PCBS:

The goal of the avionics is to be the most modular as possible, in order to have the possibility to change a board as fast as possible if needed, for example when a components is broken.

The Payload PCBs:

The payload is a live sensor experiment which is controlled by a PCB.

The propulsion and Ground Support Equipment PCB:

In order to control the hybrid motor, the ignition or the filling of the tank before the flight, many PCB's are needed.

The Valve bay linking the tank to the combustion chamber, where the control PCB will be placed to control the valve

The Ground Station:

This valise allows us to recieve and read the datas sent by the rocket before, and after its fligh, such as the alltitude, the acceleration, the speed... Many PCB's are needed to recieve and show all this information .