About Us

The Atomic Aggies of New Mexico State University are an Engineering team at New Mexico State University, that designs, builds, and launches high powered competition rockets. As a group of 30 dedicated undergraduate students their purpose is to construct the best high-powered competition rocket to compete in the annual Spaceport America Cup. Even though they put a lot of focus on the competition, they value teaching the fundamentals of rocketry to each new team member. The Spaceport America Cup is the world’s largest intercollege rocketry engineering competition. This competition is held during the third week of June at Spaceport America’s Vertical Launch Area (VLA). Teams enter two altitude categories, 10,000 or 30,000 ft and choose between two different propulsion categories, Commercial-off -the-Shelf (COTS) or Student Research and Developed (SRAD) . Each team must also develop their own payload which must fit inside the team’s rocket and be a minimum of 8.8 lbs. Each team is judged on the altitude they achieve, their payload complexity, design and construction of rocket, the team’s competency and accuracy of the intended attitude.