ARIS Project Pillars
While ARIS had it’s humble beginnings in the development of sounding rockets, we’ve expanded into all areas of space research and are now focus on three main areas of research:
The Swiss Academic Spaceflight Initiative (ARIS) is a student association dedicated to advancing space exploration and enhancing the education of our students through hands-on experience. We focus on three main project areas: rocketry, satellites, and robotics. In rocketry, we develop and launch innovative rockets using rocket engines that we develop in house. Our satellite projects involve designing and building satellites for various missions. Our robotics projects focus on creating advanced robotic systems for space exploration applications.
Additionally, the ARIS Project Lab (APL) provides a foundation for new ideas to be developed, encouraging creativity and innovation and allowing students to explore and develop cutting-edge concepts in space technology. Join us as we push the boundaries of space exploration and technology!
Robotics
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.
HERMES is ARIS’s pioneering bi-liquid propulsion rocket project. Our mission is to be the first Swiss student rocketry team to launch a bi-liquid rocket to 3 km at EuRoC 2025, pushing the boundaries of what student-led aerospace projects can achieve. By combining innovation, collaboration, and cutting-edge technology, HERMES is setting a new standard for student rocketry and embodying a vision for the future of Swiss student aerospace engineering.
Satellites
The Swiss Artificial Gravity Experiment (SAGE) mission aims to develop and operate ARIS’ first CubeSat while ensuring a sustainable knowledge transfer for future teams and missions. Its main goal is to create an artificial gravity environment by precisely spinning the spacecraft to demonstrate the ability to recreate various conditions found on small, extraterrestrial bodies.
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.
Past Projects
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.
Project PHOENIX set new standards in the field of safe recovery by focusing on guided descents of rockets. The whole project was about focusing on a reliable autonomous system to achieve the highest possible precision. Deep understanding in controls and navigation algorithms were crucial for the success of this project.
Hybrid Rocket Engines
Due to their safety compared to liquid-rocket engines and the increased efficiency compared to solid propellant motors, this engine type was the first one to be developed within our organization.
Team ASTREA was the 4th generation of Hybrid Rocket Engine which developed the most powerful hybrid rocket engine ARIS ever saw and flew the most technically advanced propulsion system in the HELVETIA rocket at the 2022 Spaceport America Cup.
Team DAEDALUS continued the work of projects RHEA and IRIDE by focusing on building a flight-ready hybrid rocket engine. The team was the first to integrate a hybrid rocket engine into an ARIS sounding rocket and flew for the first time at the European Rocketry Challenge in 2021.
IRIDE 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 had 12 successful firings with up to 16s of burn time. IRIDE reached its goal of building a reliable hybrid rocket engine which can provide 5 kN of thrust.
Since the founding of ARIS, it has been clear that commercial solid rocket motors are only a temporary solution. Project RHEA was founded, with the goal of setting a foundation for ARIS’ engine development. This team focused on the development of test infrastructure which would allow ARIS to test and refine its engines for years to come.
Liquid Engine Projects
In 2022, after five years of mastering the development of hybrid rocket engines, we took the next step which can bring us closer to space by beginning research on developing liquid rocket engines.
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 built on LEA’s progress and created a research engine worthy of ARIS’ goals. PROMETHEUS deepened our understanding of liquid rocket propulsion and made 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.
Sounding Rocket Projects
ARIS was founded in 2017 with the goal of competing at the Spaceport America Cup in New Mexico. Since then, this mission has been a driving force for technological innovation in our organization. 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.
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Project Bernoulli’s main goal was to combine the ASTREA and PERIPHAS systems into a single rocket, combining the two most highly advanced systems that ARIS had developed over the years. The team participated at the 2023 European Rocketry Challenge in Portugal.
The mission of project HELVETIA was to build upon the previous rocket projects and to ensure an advancement in ARIS’ rocket projects. They focussed on data collection, improving system reliability and were the first ARIS rocket to fly a Hybrid Engine at the Spaceport America Cup.
The mission of project PICCARD, successor of our rocket projects TELL, HEIDI and EULER, was to 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.
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