Liberty Rocketry team lands in Top 20 at international competition

The Liberty University Rocketry team’s OMEGA rocket finished 18th out of 141 entries at the International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) June 14-20 at Spaceport Midland, Texas.

The rocketry team, one of several competition teams in the School of Engineering, scored a total of 918.95 out of a possible 1,000 points, finishing ahead of entries from major engineering programs such as Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Purdue, Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State, Johns Hopkins, and Texas A&M. The event is the world’s largest intercollegiate event of its kind.

Judges gave the rocket exceptional scores in all of the competition’s engineering categories, including 112 out of 120 points in Design Quality, 109 out of 120 points in Build Quality, and 187.33 out of 200 points on its Technical Report. Liberty scored 405.62 out of a possible 500 points in flight this year, with the rocket reaching 9,191 feet — 809 feet below the category’s 10,000-foot target altitude — to land in 12th place out of 79 entries in the 10,000-foot Commercial Off-The-Shelf division. Complete results are available online.

The rocket performed well in its final test launch, reaching 10,088 feet the month before competition.

“The difference between the test flight and competition flight likely came from uncontrolled launch-day factors such as wind, temperature, pressure, launch rail conditions, and launch timing, all of which we did our best to compensate for,” said Liberty Rocketry Chief Engineer Josh Cowell. “Last year’s flight score was 476.92, which would have placed us roughly in the top five overall this year.”

This was the team’s fourth time at the IREC. The WAYMAKER rocket placed ninth overall in 2024.

“We have proven we know how to compete at a world-class level in all of the categories over which we have direct control,” added Mark Miller, Liberty Rocketry’s team mentor who has 35 years of experience with high-powered rocketry. “These skills can be passed on as tribal knowledge to the incoming team leads and team members for next year’s competition.”

Avionics team lead Steele Fritchie, a rising junior studying electrical engineering, said OMEGA achieved new milestones at the competition, including receiving on-the-spot recognition for its custom flight computer designed by rising sophomore mechanical engineering student Micah Baxter. It also featured the team’s first working payload successfully operated during flight, a 4.4-pound galvanometric laser engraver programmed by rising senior mechanical engineering honors student Caden Solle that engraved a logo on a piece of wood.

“The team’s reputation from last year and this year for our great build quality and exceptional character resulted in our selection for the highly desired ‘sunrise salvo,’ which allows experienced teams to prepare to launch as soon as gates open,” Fritchie said, noting earlier launch times typically offer lower temperatures with minimal winds. “Our team was the first with a rocket to be fully assembled and approved through the final flight (safety) review by (Experimental Sounding Rocket Association) personnel.”

OMEGA was also the second rocket in the 2026 IREC competition to be fully recovered, with a perfect recovery score after successful deployment of its drogue and main parachute systems that stabilized and decelerated the rocket on descent.

Fritchie and rising junior mechanical engineering student Owen Offman, the team’s aerostructures and recovery lead engineer, were interviewed by an Odessa, Texas, ABC-TV affiliate for a news segment before launch day at the IREC competition, representing their team and Liberty University admirably.

“The judges were extremely happy with our team and how respectful we were,” Cowell said. “All of our team members who went to competition heard time and time again how much the judges and volunteers appreciated how dedicated we were in representing Liberty well. Our first team pillar is to glorify God, and I think we did that well.”