Icarus and Dædalus Overview

Icarus and Dædalus is a dual-stage rocket, consisting of Icarus, the sustainer stage, and Dædalus, the booster stage. Icarus has a fiberglass nose cone and three body tubes, with the upper and lower body tubes made of carbon fiber, and the middle body tube made of fiberglass. The fiberglass middle body tube and nosecone are RF-transparent and each accommodate an avionics bay with a GPS, for redundancy. This is to ensure that the team doesn’t have the same problem that it had in last year’s Spaceport competition, where the team lost connection with the rocket and was unable to recover it. Icarus has one fiberglass coupler that connects the upper, middle, and lower tubes. The middle tube is fixed to the coupler and provides airframe diameter continuity between the upper and lower tubes.

Dædalus, the booster stage, consists of three body tubes as well. This decision was made to comply with Spaceport regulations that booster stages must be dual-deploy systems. The upper tube, called the interstage tube, is made of carbon fiber. The middle tube, called the RF tube, is made of fiberglass, and it accommodates the recovery avionics that control the dual-deploy system, along with an additional GPS. Finally, the lower body tube is made of carbon fiber, and also acts as the motor tube because Dædalus is a minimum diameter stage.