It’s not every day you get congratulated by NASA.

The Cyclone Student Launch Initiative Team just finished competing against approximately 20 other university teams in a NASA competition for rocket technologies. The intent is that these technologies could be used by NASA to collect and transport samples from planet Mars back to Earth, and the ISU team performed well enough to receive kudos from the aerospace icon.

“They definitely liked our design and it caught a lot of eyes and attention while we were there,” said team leader Jordan Mathews.

The annual challenge requires student teams to plan for and build from scratch an actual rocket that is able to perform a specified task.

This year, the goal was to load a payload into the rocket, launch the rocket to a zenith of exactly 3,000 feet from a launch pad teams were required to build, eject the payload during the descent at exactly 1,000 feet and land the rocket safely below a certain impact energy.

The CySLI team consisted of 19 members, mostly from the aerospace engineering program, who divided the work for building all the rocket and launch pad components among four sub-teams. The autonomous ground support equipment team built the launch pad, avionics managed the computer components, payload built the payload bay and mechanics as well as an innovative air-brake system and the rocket team built the physical rocket.

Due to some mechanical malfunctions with the launch pad and a faulty pre-fabricated component called an altimeter, the 10-foot-tall CySLI rocket did not complete all of the challenge components successfully, making them ineligible for the $25,000 challenge grand prize. However, the majority of the design components worked flawlessly and can be incorporated into rockets for future challenges.

This was the first time the Iowa State team competed in a NASA challenge, and thanks in part to the coveted air-brake system CySLI built, their rocket reached the third best altitude despite mechanical setbacks. The rocket came within 70 feet of the target height, and was bested only by the two teams that completed all of the challenge components.

The CySLI team also received an award for making the best looking rocket due to a sleek design and paintjob done by club sponsor Maaco Collision Repair.

CySLI had significant help from club mentor Gary Stroick, owner of Off We Go Rocketry, who has helped guide the club for the last couple years.

“He’s had a lot of experience, so a lot of the team would end up calling him whenever we needed help,” said payload team leader Bryan Sullivan. “Trying to apply classroom knowledge to actually building something takes a little bit of work. It’s always nice to have someone help guide you along the way.”

Overall, the CySLI rocket performed very well and outperformed most teams in flight and payload delivery.

“Honestly, we’re really glad our rocket didn’t blow up on the pad because a lot of them went up about 10 feet and something bad happened,” said Ryan Ringsred, who led the avionics portion of the team. “I was really happy with our brakes but I was not so happy with the altimeter.”

Still, CySLI members expressed enthusiasm and excitement to use these problems as experience to improve on in the future.

“All of the team members are incredibly passionate about what we do and I think that’s the one thing that keeps us going,” said Mengyu “Allen” Wang.

Wang estimated that thousands of man hours were put into the final product between submitting and reviewing reports to NASA and actually building the rocket itself.

“It you love rockets, if you love building, if you love to solve problems, then we’re the group for you,” Wang said.

Jordan Mathews said future projects will most likely yield the most applicable experience for students studying mechanical engineering, industrial engineering or aerospace engineering, and the club is open to students of any year of classification.

“We’re making a huge push to keep the group going strong and to keep Iowa State’s name on the map in terms of rocketry for next year,” Mathews said. “The best part is always the launch. You build up all this excitement over the course of two semesters, and finally once all those months of hard work are done, you get to go launch and go to a competition with your team.”

CySLI is funded by the Make to Innovate program through the Iowa State Aerospace Engineering department. This program funds a variety of projects with the goal of helping engineering students apply their classroom knowledge to physical applications before graduation.