INTERNATIONAL ROCKETRY ENGINEERING COMPEITION
KXR's Latest Entry into the International Rocket Engineering Competition
Odysseus is competed in the 10K COTS category for IREC 2026, representing two RSOs at UCF: Knights Experimental Rocketry (KXR) and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). This rocket’s mission was to carry a payload as close to 10,000 feet as possible using an airbrake controls system. We competed against about 150 different teams from across the globe in the largest collegiate rocketry competition in the world.
Meet Odysseus
Odysseus will be flew on a 98mm COTS N-Class solid motor utilizing N3300R grains. Our payload, Sunflower, was fully integrated into the nose cone section of the vehicle, which contains both the payload assembly and the elevator ejection mechanism. Sunflower is a self orienting solar panel system packaged within a 3U CubeSat form factor.
Odysseus was designed to overshoot the 10k foot apogee goal on its own, and contains an airbrake system that detects the speed of the rocket and slow it down enough after motor burnout to obtain a specific apogee.
The airframe is completely student built to minimize weight while also maximizing strength by wet laying carbon fiber tubes and a fiberglass transition and nosecone.
Launching Odysseus
Odysseus successfully flew at IREC 2026 on June 20th, 2026! We achieved an official apogee of 9,890 feet, with a secondary unofficial altimeter reading 9,935 feet as well. This apogee put the Odysseus team at the eighth most accurate team in apogee prediction. After totaling all scores, we placed 24th out of 80 teams in the 10k COTS category and 32nd overall. This flight acheived multiple firsts for UCF and KXR, including KXR's highest apogee, KXR's first successful full scale controls system, and UCF's first successful flight at IREC ever.
What's Next?
KXR will be aiming to compete in the 30k COTS category for IREC 2027, tripling our highest apogee achieved as a club yet. We will be furthering our controls knowledge by adding roll control in the form of canards to this year's IREC rocket. For our payload we will be working with SHPE again, this year on a telemetry based payload, again in a 3U cubesat size.
