Lemaire

2024 - 2025

Project Leads

• Team Lead: Patrick Bellamy
• Chief Engineer: Lachlan Whitehead
• Systems Engineer: Grace Yang
• Head of Business: David Parker

Project Description

Lemaire was ARES’ entry to the 2025 International Rocket Engineering Competition, in the 30,000 ft commercial-off-the-shelf category. The 2025 competition was held for the first time in Midland, Texas, instead of the typical New Mexico launch location. Lemaire aimed to improve upon the novel systems designed during Florence’s development. The team developed retractable rail guides leading to significant drag reduction and upgraded ARES’ air brake control algorithm to use a neural network for look-up table data compression. This neural network was selected for presentation in a podium session at competition. Lemaire’s project cycle also saw the beginnings of ARES’ hybrid rocket program, which would see the development of a sub-scale hybrid rocket engine, test stand, and data acquisition system. Lemaire was launched to an altitude of 28,460 ft, with a recovery system failure leading to some airframe damage. Lemaire placed 5^th in its category and 38^th overall out of 145 teams.