ULAS HiPR

Flight programme

Competition rockets

The vehicles that represent HiPR at international competitions.

Badhbh exterior render

Badhbh · 2.50 m

Badhbh

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Structure

Composite airframe

A 2.5-metre Category 3 vehicle built around a fully composite airframe, carrying HiPR's most tightly integrated flight architecture to date.

2.5 m vehicle

Flight control

Ogma avionics

A custom six-board flight computer links sensing, logging, communications and actuator control across the vehicle.

6-board stack

Altitude control

Active airbrakes

Servo-driven airbrakes add controllable drag during ascent. CFD-derived force models feed the onboard controller in real time.

Closed-loop control

Recovery

CO₂ deployment

A twin-cartridge pneumatic system pressurises the recovery bay on command and deploys the parachute through custom flight hardware.

Twin cartridges

Payload bay

Toirtis + Mu

The payload stack combined a deployable walking robot with a standalone cosmic-ray detector and its own flight logger.

Two experimental payloads

Macha exterior render

Macha · 1.96 m

Mach-25 · 202503 / 04

Macha

Macha combined a fibreglass upper section with a carbon-fibre lower airframe. It reached 2.273 km at Mach-25, finished second in its category and successfully deployed a CanSat that mapped safe and unsafe landing zones during descent.

  • • 2.273 km apogee
  • • Second place in category
  • • AI landing-zone CanSat
Airmedh exterior render

Airmedh · 1.95 m

EuRoC · 202402 / 04

Airmedh

Airmedh was built around a Bluetube airframe for the 3 km category at EuRoC 2024. The team launched it in Ponte de Sor, Portugal, reaching an apogee of 2.275 km and completing HiPR's first EuRoC campaign.

  • • 2.275 km apogee
  • • Bluetube airframe
  • • Ponte de Sor, Portugal
Morrigu exterior render

Morrigu · 1.84 m

Mach-24 · 202401 / 04

Morrigu

Morrigu was HiPR's first competition rocket, built from fibreglass and carbon fibre with spring recovery and a deployable payload. The airframe broke up shortly after launch, reaching roughly 600 m and giving the new team its first full set of competition-flight lessons.

  • • First competition flight
  • • Spring recovery
  • • Deployable payload

Build the next vehicle

HiPR projects are built by students across engineering, electronics, software, operations and communications.

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