USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory

USCRPL was established in 2005 by then-undergraduate Ian Whittinghill, with support from the USC Department of Astronautical Engineering.^[4] The lab's initial mission was to design, build, and launch the first entirely student-developed rocket capable of reaching space. Early work focused on incremental testing of motors, structures, and systems through static fires, subscale vehicles, and development flights.^[5]

The lab operates primarily with undergraduate students and deliberately keeps almost all design, manufacturing, and testing in-house - from propellant chemistry and motor casings to printed circuit boards and flight software - in order to maximize hands-on experience across disciplines in furtherance of the lab's informal moto of "Raw materials in, rockets out".^[6] The organization is structured around project teams covering propulsion, structures, avionics, recovery, and operations, with members taking on increasing responsibility over their undergraduate years.

Following the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, which cut off lab access and broke continuity between graduating classes, USCRPL rebuilt its internal knowledge base and returned to flight with a series of development vehicles before its 2024 spaceshot attempt.^[7]

In October 2023, USCRPL's Shockwave static-fire test set the world record for the most powerful solid-rocket motor fired by students, and the most powerful composite-case solid-rocket motor fired by amateurs.^[8]

USCRPL is housed within the USC Department of Astronautical Engineering and receives funding from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering alongside corporate sponsorships.^[6] Membership is open to undergraduates across engineering disciplines; members typically begin with hands-on fabrication tasks and progress to subsystem ownership and leadership roles. The lab has approximately 100–150 active members at any given time.^[3]

The organization maintains its own fabrication facilities, propellant mixing and casting capabilities, and avionics development infrastructure at USC. All major subsystems - including propellant formulation, motor casings, airframe structures, flight computers, and recovery systems - are designed and built internally.^[6] Professor Dan Erwin, chair of the USC Department of Astronautical Engineering, has served as a faculty advisor to the group.^[3]

USCRPL develops high-performance composite propellant solid rocket motors entirely in-house. This distinguishes the lab from many university rocketry programs that use commercially sourced motors. The motors use a composite propellant formulation based on ammonium perchlorate, combined with a high-strength filament-wound composite motor case.^[6]

Motor development is iterative, with each generation of full-scale motor anchored against static-fire test data and validated using USCRPL's internally developed simulation toolchain, FlightOn. In October 2023, the Shockwave motor - the full-scale propulsion system developed for the Aftershock program - was static-fired and recorded as the most powerful solid-propellant motor ever fired by a student team and the most powerful composite-case motor fired by amateurs.^[9]

The Traveler series comprised the lab's first efforts to achieve spaceflight:

• Traveler I (2013): An early full-scale 8-inch diameter, single-stage vehicle. Parts of the solid-fuel propellant were improperly cast, causing the motor to fail approximately 3.5 seconds after launch.^[4]
• Traveler II (2014): Incorporated improvements in composite motor cases and structures but experienced structural failures in flight, with the vehicle exploding at approximately 4,000 ft.^[10]
• Traveler III (2018): Launched from the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. An operational communications error led to launch without the avionics system armed, resulting in ballistic reentry and loss of the vehicle.^[10][11]
• Traveler IV (2019): Launched on April 21, 2019, from Spaceport America, New Mexico. Post-flight analysis of onboard data estimated an apogee of 339,800 ft (103.6 km) ± 16,500 ft, with 90% confidence of exceeding the Kármán line. The vehicle achieved a maximum velocity of approximately Mach 5.1 and was recovered successfully despite extensive thermal damage.^[2][12]

Several USCRPL alumni have gone on to prominent roles in the commercial space industry. Tim Ellis (BS/MS, USC Viterbi 2012/2013) and Jordan Noone (BS, USC Viterbi 2014) both held leadership positions at USCRPL before co-founding Relativity Space in 2015, a company focused on 3D-printed launch vehicles that raised over $1.3 billion from investors.^[31][32] More broadly, alumni from USCRPL have taken roles at NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other aerospace organizations.^[6][3]

USCRPL has been the subject of several short documentary films released on YouTube:

• Space or Nothing (2019), directed by Joseph DeRose, follows the team's journey from the Traveler III failure through the Traveler IV launch attempt. The film documents the lead-up to the April 2019 spaceshot and was released shortly after the successful flight.^[33]
• Fireball (2023), directed by Alexandra Miller and Thomas Rudden, follows USCRPL students in the period after Traveler IV as the team works to return to spaceshot capability, culminating in the April 2023 Fireball launch attempt.^[34]
• Aftershock (2025), directed by Collin Nelson, is a short documentary (16 minutes) covering the Aftershock II campaign and its record-breaking October 2024 launch.^[35]

USCRPL and its launches have been covered by mainstream and specialist media across multiple milestones. Wired covered both the Fathom II record (2017) and the Traveler IV spaceshot (2019).^[14][36] IEEE Spectrum profiled the lab as early as 2013.^[4] The Aftershock II record was reported by Aviation Week, Space.com, ABC7 Los Angeles, the New York Post, and LAist, among others. MathWorks featured the lab as a case study in student engineering education.^[6]

• Amateur rocketry
• Kármán line
• Spaceport America
• CSXT GoFast -previous amateur altitude record holder
• Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering -comparable European student rocketry group
• Relativity Space -company co-founded by USCRPL alumni
• Jordan Noone
• Tim Ellis (engineer)