WolfWorks Experimental
Independent teams use rapid iteration to explore high-speed vehicles, custom electronics, composites, staging, telemetry, and reusable systems.
Mach-et
Mach-et is the club’s first subminimum-diameter rocket. Its goal is Mach 3 and an apogee just under 17,000 feet.
A long 10:1 nosecone creates room for avionics and recovery hardware while limiting drag and weight.
Project FIRM
The Filtered Inertial Rotation Module is a reusable custom PCB for flight data collection and high-accuracy state estimation through sensor fusion and a Kalman filter.
FIRM connects practical hardware design with robust embedded software and can support many future payload missions.
Airbrakes
Airbrakes is the club’s active drag-control system, developed to help the competition vehicle reach its target apogee more precisely. Four deployable fins increase drag during coast while keeping the launch configuration compact.
A Raspberry Pi reads inertial data, processes the flight state, predicts apogee during coast, and commands a servo to extend or retract the brakes. The software records sensor, prediction, servo, and state data so each flight can improve the next one.
Barbenheimer
Barbenheimer was the club’s first-ever two-stage. The rocket was constructed entirely from custom-made composite tubes that we laid up ourselves. In its original flight configuration, it was projected to reach almost 6,000 ft with the power of both stages. Barbenheimer had a total of three launches:
- First Launch (Fall 2024): This launch would fly both stages but only ignite the booster. We intentionally didn’t light the sustainer to test the rocket with a single motor and prove it would fly and recover safely.
- Second Launch (Spring 2025): We attempted to light both motors, but the sustainer motor did not light because the tilt angle off the pad was beyond the safety limits that we had set in the flight computer. The rocket was recovered safely and shelved
- Third Launch (Fall 2025): We again attempted to ignite both motors, but this time we had safely increased the tilt limit by a small amount. Unfortunately, Barbenheimer left the pad at an extremely steep angle and once again did not light the second stage. Both stages of the rocket only reached an apogee of approximately 800 feet on this final flight. Due to the extremely low apogee, the drogue and main parachute events happened almost simultaneously, and both stages hit the ground hard before the main parachutes could fully slow them for landing. After analyzing the damage to the booster, it was determined that Barbenheimer would be grounded permanently.
2024-2025
Squakit
Squakit was one of our first attempts at making a custom composite airframe. We wrapped fiberglass around a cardboard shipping container and painted it like a creeper from Minecraft. We launched it successfully during the 2024 and 2025 interest launches. Squakit taught us about how to roll fiberglass tubes and some creative sealing methods.
2023-2024
Pencil Pusher
Pencil Pusher was the first supersonic rocket we made, built with a fiberglass airframe and carbon fiber-reinforced sandwich composite fins with a birch core. It included a custom telemetry system and flew successfully to Mach 1.4 in 2023 and Mach 2.0 in 2024 with apogee around 10k and 15k feet, respectively.
2023-2024
Rover
In Spring 2023, the WolfWorks Experimental team designed, built, tested, and flew a fully 3D-printed rover. Made out of CF-PETG material, the rover was designed to drive on the farm we launch at in Grantsboro, NC. It contains 2 continuous servo motors, 5 positional servos, an ultrasonic sensor, buck converters, an Arduino Uno, and a LiPo battery. The body was designed to just fit inside a 6″ diameter body tube to maximize internal space for electronics, with wheels that can expand an additional 3″ dia. for easier traversal of rough terrain. It has a parachute release mechanism to avoid parachute entanglement as well as driving stabilizers. You can read more about it here.