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About

About ARD

Adelaide University's student rocketry team: founded in 2018, around 85 students, and over 30 high-powered rockets launched.
A large group of team members in black ARD shirts stands on the steps of a sandstone and red-brick building, with the front row holding the Kronos rocket horizontally.
A large group of team members poses in front of a black shade tent on red dirt, with an Australian flag and two rockets standing upright among them, one navy and one red.

Who we are

South Australia's university rocketry team

The Adept Rocketry Division (ARD) is Adelaide University's student rocketry team and the only university rocketry team in South Australia. Founded in 2018, it has grown to approximately 85 students and has launched over 30 high-powered rockets. ARD is a division of Adept, a not-for-profit that gives university students hands-on engineering project experience.

Kronos stands vertically on the launch rail beside a small tree in scrubland, with a pad marker sign reading "A" in the foreground.

Competition

Competing at AURC

ARD represents Adelaide University at the Australian Universities Rocket Competition (AURC). Our teams placed 4th in the 10,000 ft COTS category in 2024; 4th in both the 5,000 ft and 10,000 ft COTS categories in 2025, along with the Lockheed Martin Australia Award for Technical Excellence; and 2nd in the 10,000 ft COTS category in 2026 with Project Kronos.

In a workshop, team members gather around the upright Kronos rocket while two of them kneel to work on its lower body section.

Sub-team

Aerostructures

The airframe, nose cone, fins and boat tail. For Kronos that meant a 3 mm fibreglass airframe, swept fins with a Nomex honeycomb core and a vacuum-bagged boat tail.

A team member in a hi-vis vest holds an open rocket body section showing a metal bulkhead with fasteners and a coloured wire.

Sub-team

Avionics

ARD's own flight computers, telemetry and power distribution. Kronos flies a three-board STM32 stack on a CAN bus, with LoRa telemetry at 915 MHz.

Exploded CAD view of the airbrake module: a central housing with four curved deployable tabs between two cylindrical end sections, with a lead screw and a red motor.

Sub-team

Flight Systems

Airbrakes and recovery. Active apogee control trims each rocket to its target altitude, and the recovery system brings it home: on Kronos, a CO2 pyro-pneumatic ejection device and a single-separation, dual-deployment layout.

Black and gold "Mission control" screen layout for Project Kronos at AURC 2026, with panels for mission brief, a vehicle visualisation grid, a systems overview listing avionics, airbrakes, recovery and propulsion on standby, and a signal monitor.

Sub-team

Ground Station

A fully SRAD tracking station: LoRa telemetry, a Yagi antenna on a pan/tilt mount driven by stepper motors, and landing-zone prediction.

A machined aluminium cube with stepped square patterns on its faces, mounted on a purple 3D-printed base with metal brackets, held in two hands.

Sub-team

Payload

Student-built experiments in CubeSat form, from a microfluidics experiment in 2025 to a 2U soil-moisture CubeSat on Kronos.

Sub-team

Documentation, Compliance and Integration

Created in response to lessons from AURC 2025, this team leads the technical documentation, competition compliance and integration of each rocket.

Functional decomposition diagram for the Vulcan hybrid engine combustion chamber and nozzle, shown as a tree of labelled boxes.

Research

Project Vulcan

ARD's hybrid rocket engine programme, working towards a static fire of a safe, functioning SRAD hybrid engine.

Research

Composites

ARD's SRAD automated composite spinner made Lightning's fibreglass airframe tubes, and the team is investigating a CNC-controlled spinner to lay fibreglass tow.

How we engineer

  • Systems engineering

    Every rocket follows a V-model systems engineering process, with agile elements.

  • Design reviews

    A preliminary design review in April and a critical design review in May, both with industry guests.

  • Simulation and analysis

    OpenRocket for flight simulation, and ANSYS Fluent and Mechanical for aerodynamic and structural analysis.

Get involved with Adept Rocketry Division

Join ARD