CAMPUS FEATURE
PRESCOTT ARIZONA CAMPUS Nestled in the beautiful Bradshaw Mountains between Phoenix and the Grand Canyon, our Western campus is renowned for its excellent seasonal weather and outdoor activities, such as skiing, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking and rock climbing, to name just a few.
WHERE PASSION IGNITES ALTITUDE EMBRY‑RIDDLE ROCKET TEAM OVERCOMES SETBACKS TO LAUNCH DENEB-2
CAMPUS PROFILE
s 3,200+ Undergraduate Students s 50 States / 53 Countries Represented s 7% International Students Student Clubs + Organizations Our Arizona Campus is home to countless student clubs, ranging from the Mountain Biking Club to the Society of Women Engineers and the Blue Eagles Skydiving Team to the Brotherhood of Steel, as well as a variety of intramural and recreational sports.
Back to the Launchpad At a launch site in California’s Mojave Desert, 20 Embry-Riddle students stood ready to fire Deneb-2 — a liquid-fueled rocket they had designed, built and, after disaster struck, rebuilt from the ground up. The Rocket Development Lab (RDL) team had already made history in 2023, when Deneb-1 set the collegiate amateur liquid-fueled rocket altitude record at 47,732 feet. This time, their sights were set on more than doubling it — aiming for 100,000 feet. “The feeling just before button push is the scariest thing in the world,” said Olivia Wood (’25), a Mechanical Engineering graduate specializing in Propulsion. Former team lead for the Deneb project, Wood now works at SpaceX as a launch operations engineer. Their launch goal nearly ended four months earlier. On Nov. 23, during a test fire, a catastrophic engine failure caused an explosion.
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“At Embry-Riddle, we have a robust safety culture at our rocket test complex,” said Dr. Neil Sullivan, former assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and faculty mentor. “Students are supported by rigorous training and certification … as well as extensive procedures for every activity performed at a test cell.” No one was injured, but Deneb-2 sustained severe damage. Frame-by-frame video analysis revealed the cause: an undetected nitrogen leak. This caused a slow fuel valve, allowing oxygen to build up in the chamber and resulting in the detonation. “Because of the explosion, we had to completely rebuild the pressure supply system,” added Mechanical Engineering student and Test Conductor Miles Holt (’26), who interned at SpaceX headquarters last summer.
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23 | Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
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