Columbia Students Reach New Heights in Hybrid Rocketry

At a remote site in the Mojave Desert, Columbia’s student rocketry team achieved an exciting milestone. On June 2, 2025, the Columbia Space Initiative (CSI) Rockets team successfully launched a hybrid rocket powered by liquid oxygen, a first for a student-led group, according to organizers of the FAR-OUT student rocketry competition.

“We had to make a lot of tough engineering decisions and develop our program to move from nitrous to liquid oxygen,” said Michael Sheehan, co-lead of CSI Rockets and a 2025 mechanical engineering major with a minor in aerospace engineering. “We pushed ourselves to do it because industry is increasingly focused on liquid oxygen-fueled rockets.”

The successful launch capped off a yearslong effort by nearly 60 undergraduates to design, build, and test the rocket. The project came to fruition at the FAR-OUT 2024-2025 competition, where the rocket reached its target altitude for the first time in team history and achieved full recovery. The team shared video clips of the launch with Columbia Engineering faculty and supporters.

“This is an incredible achievement,” said Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “It shows how our engineering education has accelerated from textbooks and lectures to record-breaking experiential learning. This is literally the next generation of rocket scientists.”

“It made my day to see our student team launch this newly designed rocket,” said Shih-Fu Chang, Dean of Columbia Engineering.

Now in its third consecutive year of successful launches, CSI Rockets has become a proving ground for student-led aerospace work. With this milestone behind them, the team is already planning its next move.

“We’re excited for what the next generation will accomplish,” said Sheehan. “This is just the beginning.”

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Getting to the Launchpad

The CSI Rockets team is composed entirely of undergraduate students, drawing from a wide range of disciplines and schools across Columbia University. While the group is rooted in engineering, it includes students from Columbia College, Columbia Engineering, and Barnard.

While most teams at FAR-OUT work on the same rocket for two or three years, the Columbia team builds a new rocket each year. 

“We do something different with the rocket every year,” said CSI Rockets co-lead Valentina Fichera, who graduated in 2025 with a degree in mechanical engineering. “Everyone was on board with transitioning to liquid oxygen — it forced us to push ourselves.”

This year’s team included about 60 members, with 19 traveling to the desert for the launch. Those undergraduate students were spread across specialized teams focused on propulsion, electronics, airframe, payload, and the combustion chamber. 

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Inside the Rocket

CSI Rockets had previously relied on nitrous oxide hybrid systems. But this year, the team switched to a liquid oxygen hybrid, which is a far more technically demanding system typically used in larger-scale commercial rockets. Few student teams even attempt liquid oxygen hybrids.

“We all wanted that experience,” Fichera said. 

“Liquid oxygen exists in a cryogenic state,” explained Sheehan. “So everything from storage to pressurization becomes more complex. We had to overhaul our entire propulsion system.” The team used gaseous nitrogen to pressurize the liquid oxygen and built new components to manage the system safely and effectively.

“We designed for a target apogee of 6,500 feet and reached nearly 5,700. It was our most accurate launch yet,” Fichera said. The launch itself came on the second-to-last window on the final day of the event, after multiple early-morning attempts. 

Fichera and Sheehan, who have interned at leading aerospace companies like Firefly and SpaceX, are pursuing engineering positions in industry.

“We spent a lot of time working on the rocket this year,” Fichera said with a laugh. 

CSI team members who attended the FAR-OUT rocketry competition:

• Michael Sheehan ’26SEAS (Team Co-Lead)
• Skylar Bogdanowitsch ’26SEAS (Team Co-Lead)
• Valentina Marini Fichera ’25SEAS (Team Co-Lead)
• Jorge Casas '23CC (Team Co-Lead)
• Aadam Awad ’26SEAS (Fluids Co-Lead)
• Vayu Singhal ’26SEAS (Fluids Co-Lead)
• Isabella Singleton ’27SEAS (Airframe Lead)
• Theo Lack ’26SEAS (Rising Fluids Co-Lead)
• Angela De Labra ’27SEAS (Rising Airframe Co-Lead)
• Alex Chen ’25SEAS (Electronics Co-Lead)
• Ania Krzyżańska ’25SEAS (Electronics Co-Lead)
• Tieqiong Zhang ’25SEAS (Electronics Co-Lead)
• Aruzhan Abil ’28CC (Rising Electronics Co-Lead)
• Joss Clegg ’28SEAS (Rising Electronics Co-Lead)
• Christopher Acosta ’25SEAS (Propulsion Combustion Chamber Co-Lead)
• Tingmeng Wang ’27SEAS (Propulsion Combustion Chamber Co-Lead)
• Raisa Effress ’27Barnard (Propulsion Combustion Chamber Co-Lead)
• Naomi Dreicer Liberman ’27SEAS (Rising Propulsion Combustion Chamber Co-Lead)
• Maria Cuevas ’26CC (Payload Co-Lead)
• Siroun Johnson ’26SEAS (Payload Co-Lead)

Lead Photo Credit: Courtesy of Columbia Space Initiative