The Vanderbilt rocket team captured its ninth payload design award and placed 2nd at the 2025-2026 University Student Launch Initiative (USLI) competition conducted by the NASA Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA announced results on June 3, 2026 of the rocket challenge held in April at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama. First place in payload design earns a $1,000 prize from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
The Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory (VADL) placed second overall in the NASA student competition and will receive a $2500 award from the National Space Club in Huntsville. NASA announced only two overall winners in the USLI event. The University of Alabama at Huntsville took top honors and won a $5000 prize from event sponsor Northrop Grumman.
Teams were tasked with designing, building, and flying the payload, “STEMnaut Habitat for Agricultural Utilization Study” (HAUS). The HAUS needed to safely house four astronauts—STEMnauts—in extended living quarters and provide equipment for autonomously collecting and testing soil samples following landing.
Thirty-three university teams from across the country earned spots in a grueling eight-month competition that moved through rigorous design reviews and flight tests before culminating in the final launch on April 24. VADL was competing in its 19th year under the direction of Amrutur Anilkumar, the Mark Dalton Director of Experiential Learning in Aerospace Engineering.
“This has been by far the most challenging payload that NASA has imposed on the teams and VADL met all of NASA’s requirements,” Anilkumar said. “The payload went about its job of collecting soil through an ingenious excavation mechanism, mixing the collected soil with deionized water carried on board, and generated high-quality soil conductivity data right in the range for fertilized soils.”
Added Anilkumar: “One word for the team performance—Excellent.”
Red Alert
The team faced three separate red-alert situations with their rocket—named “Stop, Drop and Roll”—on competition day, any one of which could have ended their run.
“Our entire payload electronics failed actuation tests in the field. We were able to get ourselves together, calm down and track the problem to a short in the PC board during field testing,” said Ashley Fu, an electrical and computer engineering major and the electronics systems lead for the team. “Immediately we swapped the PC board out, changed the flight batteries, went through the entire hardware in the loop test protocol, and readied the rocket and payload for flight.’’
The second red alert: Both altimeters started beeping and registered a launch while still sitting on the assembly table. “The strong breeze was enough to fool them into reading a false altitude. We moved the altimeters into the avionics bay and let them sit for half an hour to confirm it was a false alarm before proceeding,” said Jamie Danis, the rocketry team’s launch leader and a mechanical engineering major.
The heavy breeze brought a third alert: Fine red sand was blanketing the payload, which could have prevented proper deployment.
“We went straight to work and cleaned the surfaces, greased them, ran a pull test to verify the loads were within spec, then covered the entire payload body to keep the sand off. At flight time, extraction was flawless,” said Jack Liedel, overall team leader and a mechanical engineering major.
“We go to the launch rail, and the rocket is sitting only 6 inches off the ground on a big foundation block and that is a no-no for launch because the back pressure would be high and the delivered thrust would be lower,” mechanical engineering senior Jamie Danis said. “I doubled up to the launch tent and returned with a metal flash guard to replace the huge block so that the back pressure would be substantially lower. Every last thing matters and failure is not an option in these NASA competitions.”
“We had computed in detail the apogee window possibility and the 4216 registered by the altimeter was very close to the pre-challenge declared value of 4200 ft. give or take 25 ft,” said Flight Analytics Team Lead Ben Racape, a mechanical engineering senior. “In fact, when we took a second look at the altimeter data, we realized that the altimeter was reading about 15 ft at ground level, and if that were zeroed out, we would be right on the jackpot.”
Anilkumar said this was a comeback win for VADL, cementing its legacy as one of the top academic teams in the nation. “You challenge these students and they will come and build—that is the VADL motto.”
Contact brenda.ellis@vanderbilt.edu