History
The High Powered Rocketry (HPR) team was founded in the spring of 2025 with the creation of the AERE Enterprise at Michigan Tech. The team emerged with support from members of the existing rocketry club, Keweenaw Rocket Range. During its inaugural semester, HPR collaborated with the club to compete in the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC). In this partnership, HPR was responsible for designing the payload, while Keweenaw Rocket Range developed the launch vehicle. Since then, HPR has grown into an independent team, now competing at IREC under its own banner.
Our Goal
The goal of the High-Powered Rocketry team in AERE is to provide members with hands on experience in rocketry to deepen their technical knowledge and apply classroom concepts to real world engineering challenges. Through participation in the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC), students design, build, test, and launch high powered rockets, gaining experience in the full engineering lifecycle. By working on complex, team based projects, members develop both technical and collaborative skills equipping them with the tools needed for success in the aerospace industry after graduation.
Past Missions
IREC 2025 – Questionable Lineage
While spring semester of 2025 was the first semester of AERE and our High Powered Rocketry team we teamed up with the rocketry club (Keweenaw Rocket Range); HPR focused on the payload while Keweenaw Rocket Range made the launch vehicle. The goal was to get to as close to 10,000 feet as possible in altitude while having a 2kg or heavier payload. For our payload the goal was to develop a compressed gas roll control system. However with limited time HPR was unable to fully test it before hand and just had it collect data during the competition launch. In the end HPR placed 48th out of the 146 teams that launched, placing in the top third as a first time competition team.