DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) will represent the country once again at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) 2025 in Midland, Texas, in the United States this June, as they hope to continue their trailblazing path of putting the Philippines on the map of global aerospace development.
Thirty students from AdDU’s aerospace engineering course will comprise the team, as they will compete in the 30,000-feet Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) category, more than tripling the altitude of their first rocket, Sibol, which launched in New Mexico last year at 10,000 feet.
AdDU’s rocketry team’s second student-built rocket, named Siklab (Filipino for spark or ignite), has been cleared for launch by the IREC after passing the Flight Readiness Review (FRR).
As one of only three Southeast Asian teams this year (alongside Malaysia and Thailand), the rocketry team said it sees its participation as a platform to represent the country and region in a space still dominated by global north institutions.
“We want to show the world that we’re on par with the different universities. We are on par with schools like MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. MIT is competing this year. [University of Canterbury too]. We’ve seen them do their rockets, and we know we can do it as well,”said the team’s assistant leader Franz Guevara.
The 2025 IREC will take place from June 9 to 14. Organized by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA), IREC is considered the largest and most competitive university rocket engineering event in the world.
The university hopes the success of Siklab will spark continued investment in aerospace education and research in the country, particularly in Mindanao.
“We look towards the Philippines becoming much more participative in international and local space technology development,” said Dr. Rogel Mari Sese, chair of the Aerospace Engineering Department of the university.
The team’s shift to a higher category came after months of technical upgrades and design improvements.
“If successful, this will be the highest altitude achieved by any Philippine-made rocket… This is also a way of providing a venue to develop space technology here in the Philippines, especially with the recent creation of the Philippine Space Agency in 2019,” Sese said.
According to project lead Avery Clyde Dimasuhid, Siklab has been designed to be slimmer and more aerodynamic, only being 4 inches in diameter and 11 feet in length compared to Sibol, which stood at 6 inches in diameter and 9.7 feet tall.
“Last year, we only had a boiler payload. This year, we have a payload that is capable of tracking, logging, air quality, of sensing air quality and humidity. So it has CO2 and O2, and other air quality sensors,” Dimasuhid said.
He added that changes in the competition’s technical guidelines also influenced how the team approached this year’s payload design.
“Last year’s payload was at 8.8 pounds. Now this year, with the revision of the rules and regulations of the ESRA [Experimental Sounding Rocket Association], we have minimized it to 2 kilograms. This is much more advantageous for us because a 2-kilogram payload would allow us to reach that 30,000 feet altitude that is being targeted by this category.”
The rocket is also expected to travel at Mach 1.7 — faster than the speed of sound according to Assistant Lead Franz Guevara — reaching a speed of approximately 690 meters per second.
The Ateneo rocketry team is the first from the Philippines to reach the IREC competition last year at the Spaceport America Cup held on June 2024 in New Mexico which gathered 122 teams from engineering students worldwide. (davaotoday.com)
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