Since the restructuring of our association in 2022, ARIS organizes its technical efforts in three different branches: the Flagship Project, the Competition Team and the ARIS Project Lab. While the Flagship Project focuses on achieving the main technical objectives of our association, the Competition Team shall provide a test bed for young members to get first experiences in working in large technical teams. The third tier of our association, the ARIS Project Lab – or APL – shall allow our members to come up with their own project ideas relevant in the field of space engineering and bring them to execution with the support of our association.
ARIS Flagship Project
Attending rocket competitions all around the world was an important driver of progress within our association, in particular with getting the “basics” of rocket science right. However, already at the initiation of ARIS, we knew that this will only be the beginning of our journey to space. In 2022, after five years of mastering these basics, we are ready to take the next steps that shall bring us to launching a CubeSat experiment to orbit on an in-house developed launch platform within the next ten years.
Project Odyssey aims to launch the first Swiss rocket into space by 2027. Powered by a bi-liquid propellant engine the rocket will fly up to the Karman line, 100km above the Earth’s surface. This would be a world-first in student rocketry!
Competition Team
ARIS was founded in 2017 with the goal of competing at the SAC in New Mexico. Since then, mission has remained the main driver for technological innovation in our organization. From 2022 onward, the Competition Team will remain a key unit of ARIS, one that will allow new and younger members to get first experiences with working on solving technical problems in the scope of teams consisting of several dozen members.
Rocket Team
Responsible for providing the structure, avionics, recovery and the payload of ARIS sounding rockets, these are the projects with the longest history within our association.
Team NICOLLIER‘s goal is to implement and finalize the guided recovery system developed by PERIPHAS and improved by BERNOULLI.
We will compete at EuRoC 2024 in the 3000m solid motor category. This is especially focused on precision which is the reason why we will implement air brakes, designed by EULER.
We have also added other, smaller technical innovations.
Project Bernoulli’s main goal is to integrate the ASTREA hybrid rocket engine and the PERIPHAS guided recovery system into the most advanced rocket ever built by ARIS. We will compete at the 2023 EuRoC in Portugal. The engine will propel the rocket to 9 kilomteres, from where the guided recovery will take over and bring us back down safely.
The mission of project PICCARD, successor of our rocket projects TELL, HEIDI and EULER, states the contribution to the development of ARIS by flying a 4 kg payload to 30’000 ft using a hybrid-propellant engine, active control systems and to recover
all parts safely.
ARIS’ third rocket project EULER made the next big step in the development of our launch-vehicles. Team EULER designed a rocket to fly supersonic to 30’000 ft with a commercial off-the-shelf
motor. At the first ever European Rocketry Challenge in Portugal, EULER won the Award for Technical Excellence
of ARIS’ sounding rockets. With project HEIDI, ARIS won the second place in its category of 10’000 ft and commercial-off-the-shelf solid motors with a
nominal flight at the Spaceport America Cup in New Mexico
ARIS’ first project consisted of the design, manufacturing, and testing of the first sounding rocket. The rocket was designed to reach an apogee of 10’000ft with a commercial off-the-shelf solid motor and be recovered with a dual parachute system. TELL won the Charles Hoult Award for
Modeling and Simulations.
Hybrid Rocket Engine
Due to their technical simplicity compared to liquid-rocket engines and the increased safety compared to solid propellant motors, this engine type was the first one to be developed within our organisation.
DAEDALUS will continue the work of projects RHEA and IRIDE by focusing on building a flight-ready hybrid rocket engine. The team has set its goals high, as they aim to integrate a hybrid-propellant rocket engine into an ARIS rocket for first time in our association’s history.
IRIDE’s mission focused on developing the second-generation hybrid rocket engine of ARIS. The team built on the knowledge and experiences of our past project RHEA and was able to have 12
successful firings with up to 16 s of burn time. With this, IRIDE reached its goal of building a reliable hybrid rocket engine which can provide 5 kN of thrust to propel a sounding rocket
Ever since the founding of ARIS, it has been clear that commercial solid rocket motors are only a temporary solution. Therefore, project RHEA was established, with the goal of setting a foundation for ARIS’ engine developments. In this first phase, even more important than the engine itself, was the development of a testing infrastructure. This infrastructure would allow ARIS to test and refine its engines for years to come
Guided Recovery
A key technology for future recovery of first stages of large scale ARIS rockets, our association started investigating on how to guide recovered rocket bodies safely to the ground to a specified location early on.
ARIS Engine Projects
Attending rocket competitions all around the world was an important driver of progress within our association, in particular with getting the “basics” of rocket science right. However, already at the initiation of ARIS, we knew that this will only be the beginning of our journey to space. In 2022, after five years of mastering these basics, we are ready to take the next steps that shall bring us to launching a CubeSat experiment to orbit on an in-house developed launch platform within the next ten years.
Project HELIOS is the continuation of the PROMETHEUS Project. The goal is to build a more powerful engine thanks to the improved understanding of the bi-liquid engine setup. The focus lies on the applicability in our future rocket projects.
Project PROMETHEUS aims to build on LEA’s progress and create a research engine worthy of ARIS’ goals. PROMETHEUS will deepen our understanding in bi-liquid rocket propulsion and make future space missions possible for ARIS.
Project LEA aims to build the first ARIS liquid rocket engine, compatible with cryogenics (e.g. liquid oxygen). Along with a mobile test bench – enabling cheaper, faster and local test firings – as well as a newly developed, extendable data acquisition and controls system, project LEA will form the knowledge foundation of many future ARIS projects.
ARIS Project Lab
This entity within ARIS is home to projects that are not directly related to the main mission of ARIS, but still cover topics and technologies that might become relevant in the future. It also allows for projects to be more explorative with their projects and hence serve as ARIS’ main driver for research and development work.
Earth is the small pool of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the small pool forever. The NAUTILUS project aims at developing an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) to explore the oceans of Jupiter and Saturn’s icy moons, in order to look for traces of life, and understand better our origins and our universe. To achieve this, we develop a very innovative solution, based on the emerging
and truly exciting field of soft robotics.
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