<aside> 📚 Table of Contents

</aside>

Introduction

The CubeSAT-Adorned Rocketry Masterpiece, or CARM, is the Tufts Rocketry Team’s first ever entry into the Spaceport America Cup. Six inches in diameter, 12 feet long, and weighing 87 pounds at liftoff, CARM was designed to carry a prototype CubeSAT (built by the Tufts CubeSAT Project Team) to 10,000 feet on a commercial off-the-shelf solid motor.

This project represents a massive step in the Rocketry Team’s goals and capabilities. CARM was our first competition rocket, our first rocket to employ an all-fiberglass architecture, and by far our most powerful rocket to date. It represented the culmination of years of efforts to continually learn, improve our designs, and grow our team operations. The success of CARM was guided by our dedicated subteam leads:

• Nico Moldovean – Project Lead & Chief Engineer
• Daniel Opara – Avionics and Telemetry Subteam Lead
• Cisco Hadden – Recovery and Propulsion Subteam Lead
• May Wildgrube – Electrical Subteam Lead
• Nicholas Martin – Mechanical Subteam Lead
• Ben Fisher – Mechanical Subteam Lead Assistant
• Rachel Bonanno – Media Subteam Lead

Following an intense year with many setbacks, tough challenges, and lots of lessons learned, CARM flew successfully at the competition and placed 33rd/122 overall, an extremely impressive achievement for a first-time team!

Test Flights

Flight 1—February 25, 2024

https://youtu.be/tbuyRW1FYxg

Outcome: Success

Limitations: Custom onboard flight computers shorted out pre-flight, limiting the data gathered to exclusively the Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) flight computers