Launch of Daybreak from the rocket launch site in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada.
USC Rocket Propulsion Lab (USCRPL) are on a roll with their to-do list.
When the student-run team was established at USC Viterbi’s Department of Astronautical Engineering two decades ago, their founding goal was to become the first collegiate team to launch a rocket into space.
Since meeting that target in 2019 with Traveler IV and breaking the altitude record for amateur rocketry with Aftershock II in 2024, the team has set its sights on becoming the only collegiate team to have a fully in-house space program, capable of carrying commercial and scientific payloads to space.
Their latest mission, Daybreak, has passed the first hurdle to that goal. Launched from the black Rock Desert in Nevada on 18 April, the rocket crossed the Kármán line (the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space), reaching an altitude of 331,790 feet (above ground, not sea level) and a maximum velocity of 4700 feet per second / Mach 4.3.
True, the team have set higher records in the past (Aftershock II soared to approximately 470,000 feet with a velocity of 5283 feet per second / Mach 5.5), but this mission was less about the numbers than the capacity to reliably and regularly return to space.
View from the nosecone post-deployment.
“We’ve worked hard to advance from successful spaceshots to an efficient and reliable space program,” said Ian McDaniel, USCRPL lab lead. “With Daybreak, we were able to fly new structures, avionics and a recovery system, amassing significant new data which will move the lab forward. It was incredibly rewarding to work with other student rocket teams, flying payloads for Embry Riddle’s RDL, University of Michigan’s MASA, and Arizona State University’s SDR – we learned a lot, and we’re now setting our sights on developing new capabilities and refining our design and build process.”
From test to triumph
Daybreak is the result of several years of iterative design, integrating technologies first tested on Malibu, the smaller development rocket launched in 2025.
One of the goals of Malibu was to improve recovery performance, as Aftershock II had been damaged during landing. The upgrades for Malibu included a dual-deployment recovery system, a new boat-tail design, updated avionics and the lab’s first dedicated payload capsule.
Daybreak scaled those technologies to a full spaceshot. The potential for damage during landing was reduced by the two parachutes of the dual-deployment recovery system, while the boat-tail structure increased available volume within the vehicle, creating additional room for propulsion systems and payloads. The avionics architecture consolidated multiple electronics boards into a single system and new launch-guidance hardware was tested to improve alignment on launching.
“Recovery is central to our definition of success,” said Sofia Pantoja, the team’s former executive engineer. “You need to be able to bring the rocket back to the lab to prove that those projects worked, to get the flight footage and recover the data. This time, we were able to analyze the vehicle’s performance and evaluate the technologies we had spent months developing and testing.”
Performance plus payloads
Before the launch, Pantoja described payload integration as the next milestone for USCRPL. “We want to get to the state where we can send payloads to space for other universities and organizations,” she said. “We want to be able to test those payloads, bring them back safely and return the data.” Daybreak demonstrated those capabilities by proving reliable launch operations, successful recovery systems and ultimately expanding access to space for other student teams.
Now, with those to-do’s ticked off the list, the lab is developing its next generation of vehicles. Future rockets will combine technologies validated on Daybreak with redesigned propulsion systems intended to increase manufacturing productivity and mission capability.
“Our work is not done,” said McDaniel, who will be leading USCRPL now that Pantoja has graduated and starting her career at SpaceX.
“If we want to architect a space program, we need to make rockets more efficiently,” he explained. “This requires a redesign of our motor and our propellant. It won’t be easy. We might explode a motor or two, but the capabilities we will unlock are well worth the effort. Then, we plan to fly a rocket that combines the best tech from Daybreak with our new motor.”
There are tough challenges ahead – but now the uncertainty factor is reduced. “The first two times we reached space were separated by five years,” said McDaniel. “Daybreak proves that the successes of Traveler IV and Aftershock II weren’t down to luck — we can reliably return to space again and again, advancing our rocket design with each new mission.”
The USCRP team at the rocket launch site in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada
Published on June 18th, 2026
Last updated on June 18th, 2026