Space Technologies and Rocketry - Arktos

Thank you for your consideration in supporting STAR! Space Technologies and Rocketry (STAR), UC Berkeley's first high-powered rocketry team, was founded in the fall of 2015. We aim to create and nurture a community of students from a various backgrounds who are interested in aerospace, either professionally or as a hobby.

In our first year, we competed at NASA Student Launch, a nationwide competition in which universities launch rockets of their own design to a height of one mile, and perform a payload experiment during flight.  We designed and built two rockets that we launched a total of five times - the subscale URSA Minor, and its bigger sibling URSA Major, a 9-foot behemoth packing an L-class solid motor. URSA Major was launched successfully at Student Launch.

Over the next few years, our team plans to expand its horizons considerably. This year, we are in the process of working on new projects- a liquid bipropellant engine and a custom flight computer. These projects will make their debut in June, where we will compete at the Spaceport America Cup hosted by the Experimental Sounding Rocketry Association. Rockets flown at this competition reach heights of up to 30,000 feet, which is considerably more challenging than Student Launch. As such, our projected budget will be larger than our past expenditures. We are looking to fundraise about $40,000. About half of our projected budget will go to the NASA Student Launch competition. The remaining half is split between the Spaceport America Cup, propulsion research, and electronics research.

As shown above, our crowdfunding project Arktos is the biggest portion of our current budget. In addition to the research funds and resources from our university, this project Arktos will help us reach our projected budget goal. Your donations will allow us to fund necessary rocket equipment without financial compromise.

Ultimately, as we refine our designs and manufacturing processes, we hope to be the first college rocketry team to launch a rocket into space, reaching altitudes of over 100 km (62 mi). Through our competitions and projects, we hope to promote and increase the presence of aerospace engineering here at UC Berkeley. Please, make a gift today to help support our dreams and aspirations to reach the STARS!