The World's Largest collegiate Rocket Engineering Competition
Brief History
Since 2006, the IREC was an annual occurrence in Green River, UT. The competition achieved international status in 2011 – when schools from Canada and Brazil joined – and has doubled in size every year since 2013. By 2014 we were the world’s largest rocket competition at the college and university level.
More than 600 students participated in the 2016 competition, representing over 50 schools from 6 different continents. It was at this point a new venue became necessary if the IREC was to continue grow and thrive. With the world class facilities and assistance of expert staff at Spaceport America, NM, we took the IREC to a whole new level!
In 2025, the IREC moved beyond Spaceport America, growing into a new launch site at Spaceport Midland, Texas, to provide even more exciting challenges for student teams where ESRA introduced the 30k and 45k 2-stage categories. During the 2025 competition ESRA broke competition records welcoming 143 teams of 1890 students to Midland and launching a competition record of 137 rockets in 4 days.
ESRA is looking forward to an even brighter future for student engineers in 2026!
What We Do
ESRA hosts an International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) for student rocketry teams from across the USA and around the world. With a minimum payload size of 2.2 pounds and target altitudes of either 10,000, 30,000 or 45,000 feet above ground level. Competing rockets are typically 4 to 8 inches in diameter and 8 to 20 ft. long. Multistage rockets and all chemical propulsion types (solid, liquid, and hybrid) are allowed.
Judging Criteria Overview
Technical poster and podium sessions before an expert judges panel during a conference day
Written technical report on their project concept, requirements, design implementation, and testing
Written technical report appendices on safety analysis, including hazard & risk assessments
Quality and competency of final design implentation
Amount of student researched & developed systems, versus off-the-shelf components
Rocket flight performance measured by distance from target altitude and successful recovery
Payload innovation and functionality
Professional conduct and use of procedures
Why We Do it
Designing, building, and flying research rockets is a great way to motivate and encourage students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) based careers. The smoke-and-fire, noise, high speeds, and sleek aerodynamics of rocketry draw student interest in STEM like few other fields can.
They have "Rocket Fever!", and competition motivates them to extend themselves beyond the classroom to design and build these high flying machines themselves. These students also learn to work as a team, solving real world problems under the same pressures of cost, schedule, and technical risk they'll experience in their future careers.
