2025 – 2026
Soil-analysis rover
The current cycle: a rover built to reach the ground and sample it. Wide printed wheels for loose terrain and a front collection head, shown here as an assembled prototype during fit checks.
/ Technical DivisionDRACO Division
Payload
Electronics & SensorsEmbedded SoftwareMechanical IntegrationMission Testing
/ OverviewA Rocket With Something To Do
Every year, a different machine
Payload builds the mission system that gives each rocket a purpose beyond flight — combining mechanical design, electronics, programming, and testing to complete the objective the competition sets that year.
Because the objective changes every cycle, so does the hardware. The division has built a walking robot, an aircraft, a sealed capsule, two rovers, and a helicopter — and started each one from a blank page.
/ ArchiveSeven Cycles
The payload record
One mission per competition year, newest first. The through-line is not a single machine — it is a division that rebuilds its entire discipline stack annually and keeps flying.
2024 – 2025
Full-vehicle payload integration
Payload does not stop at the payload. This vehicle-level section view places the electronics bay, its bulkheads, and the payload volume inside the airframe — the drawing Launch Vehicle and Payload work from together to confirm everything physically fits.
CAD2024 – 2025
2023 – 2024
Coaxial-helicopter STEMnaut lander
Two counter-rotating rotor sets on a single shaft — a coaxial helicopter built to carry the mission's STEMnaut crew and descend under its own control. Photographed here during ground checks before flight.
2022 – 2023
Self-righting tracked rover
A tracked rover that had to survive being packed in a rocket, released, and then recover from whatever orientation it landed in. The design pack covers the retention interface, the release mechanism, self-righting legs, a 360° camera mast, and the six-inch shell it all had to fit inside.
CAD2022 – 2023
2021 – 2022
Instrumented capsule
A sealed cylindrical capsule sized to the body tube, carrying a single-board computer and its supporting electronics on an internal rail. The transparent shell in the render is how the division checks clearance and cable routing before anything is machined.
CAD2021 – 2022
2020 – 2021
Quadcopter deployment concept
A four-rotor aircraft designed to be carried inside the airframe and released in flight. The CAD shows the folding-arm structure, camera mount, single-board computer, and landing gear packed into the volume a rocket body tube allows.
CAD2020 – 2021
2019 – 2020
Six-legged walking robot
The earliest payload in the team's record: a servo-driven hexapod built around a single microcontroller board, with every leg independently actuated. Walking gait rather than wheels — a deliberately hard first problem in coordinated actuation.
/ DetailRetention & Release
Getting there is half the mission
A payload spends the entire ascent clamped inside a body tube under launch loads. It has to hold, then let go, then work — and every one of those three has to be designed and tested separately.
CADStowed configuration
Drive test
/ ScopeCore Responsibilities
What Payload owns
01
Electronics & sensor system design
Choosing, wiring, and powering the sensors that let the payload perceive anything at all.
02
Embedded systems & programming
The onboard software that runs the mission — unattended, once, with no chance to intervene.
03
Mechanical design & integration
Making the machine fit, mount, survive launch loads, and release cleanly from the airframe.
04
Mission logic & data handling
Deciding what the payload does after separation, and what it records while doing it.
05
Testing & verification
Proving on the bench and in the field that the sequence works before it has to work in flight.
/ StackTools & Skills
What members work with
- Embedded systems
- Microcontrollers & sensors
- C / C++ / Python
- PCB & circuit design
- CAD & mechanical integration
Payload is the division where mechanical, electrical, and software engineering have to agree with each other — a member who joins for one of the three usually leaves having done all three.
/ Why It MattersImpact on DRACO
The bottom line
Payload turns each flight into a mission. It is where mechanical, electrical, and software engineering converge to achieve a real objective in the air — and the reason a DRACO launch is measured by more than altitude.
/ Join Payload
Next year's machine has not been designed yet
Every cycle Payload starts over with a new objective. If you want to build electronics, write embedded software, or design mechanisms that have to work the first time, this is the division.