• Submit an application for a team of three to ten students (grades 6-12) on or before December 1st, 2024 and issue payment of $165 per team. Note that the registration is open to the first 1,000 teams to complete payment and submit their registration.
• Build a model rocket that carries two large hen eggs to an altitude of 790 feet, stays airborne for between 41 and 44 seconds, and returns the rocket to the ground safely with the egg unbroken.
• Rockets must not exceed 650 grams gross weight at liftoff.  The overall length of the rocket must be no less than 650 millimeters. They must use body tubes of two different diameters in their exterior structure, the upper one of which must have sufficient inside diameter to hold  eggs of up to 60mm length sideways and the lower one of which must be no greater than 57 millimeters in outer diameter. Each of these body tubes must be no less than 150 millimeters long.  The rocket must separate into two non-connected pieces for recovery, with one piece containing the eggs and altimeter and the other containing the rocket motor. Each piece must recover safely by parachute.
• Fly your rocket in front of an observer from the National Association of Rocketry (NAR) up to three times for an official qualification score between June 1, 2024 and April 7, 2025.
• If your score from the sum of your two best qualification flights is one of the 100 best, you will be invited to compete for a share of the $100,000 prize package in a national fly-off on May 17, 2025.

The rocket must contain and completely enclose two raw hen’s eggs of 57 to 63 grams weight and a diameter of 60 millimeters or less. The 2025 rules require the eggs to oriented “sideways” for flight, i.e. with the long axis of the eggs perpendicular to the long axis of the rocket.

Hundreds of teams are entering the American Rocketry Challenge from across the country, but our final grand championship fly-off in Northern Virginia can only accommodate 100 teams. In order to qualify to attend this fly-off each team must conduct a minimum of two and no more than three qualification flight attempts in the actual presence of a current adult (age 21 or above) member of the NAR, no later than April 7, 2025.

A qualification flight attempt must be declared before the rocket’s motor(s) are ignited. Once an attempt is declared, the results of that flight must be recorded and must be submitted to AIA.  Teams do this for their own successful flights using the rocket contest portal.

If the rocket then misfires and does not leave the launch pad, the attempt does not count as one of the official tries. If the rocket does leave the launch pad, even if not all motors ignite, and even if the flight experiences some other flight vehicle failure, the flight attempt is official. If a rocket experiences a catastrophic failure of one or more rocket motors (burst casing or ejected engine grain) in flight, the attempt may, at the team’s discretion, not be counted as official.

The supervising teacher/adult or the NAR observer in the case of unsuccessful official qualification flight attempts must submit the score report on qualification flights to the AIA offices by April 7, 2025. The top 100 teams will be announced no later than April 16, 2025. Practice flights, before and after your qualification flights, and in a variety of wind and weather conditions, are highly encouraged.  There is no opportunity for doing practice flights at the Finals.

Rockets must not exceed 650 grams gross weight at liftoff.  The overall length of the rocket must be no less than 650 millimeters. They must use body tubes of two different diameters in their exterior structure, the upper one of which must have sufficient inside diameter to hold an egg of up to 60mm length sideways and the lower one of which must be no greater than 57 millimeters in outer diameter. Each of these body tubes must be no less than 150 millimeters long.  The rocket must separate into two non-connected pieces for recovery, with one piece containing the eggs and altimeter (this is the part that is timed) and the other containing the rocket motor. Each piece must recover safely by parachute.

The official date is Saturday, May 17, 2025 at Great Meadow in The Plains, VA, about 50 miles west of Washington, DC. The rain date will be Sunday, May 18, 2025. The registration fee for a team to attend the 2025 National Finals is $350.

The deadline for a new team to complete and submit an application is December 1, 2024. The registration portal will close on December 1, or when the first 1000 teams have submitted a completed application, including the $165 registration payment, between June 1 and December 1, 2024.

No. Separate pyrotechnic charges are specifically prohibited in the rules.

Official rockets must be prepped and flown in the competition and in their preceding qualification flights by the student team members without adult assistance, so an adult with a Low Explosives Users Permit is not a solution to the black powder ejection charge issue. There is no legal solution, and the rules prohibit it.

It is permitted to use a standard igniter to burn through an actuating string in an onboard system; a single igniter with no augmenting powder charge is not a “pyrotechnic charge”. There are commercial devices that mechanically release bands that hold recovery devices closed until preset altitudes; these are permitted.

Radio-control systems are not permitted.

Only “autonomous” onboard control systems such as timers or computer systems (e.g. Arduino) may be used to control the flight duration or altitude of the rockets. Transmit-only tracking beacons for post-flight location of the rocket are permitted.

Yes. The Consumer Product Safety Commission requires that metal-casing reloadable model rocket motors be sold only to persons age 18 or older, but there are no regulations prohibiting a younger person from assembling and flying a reloadable model rocket motor that was purchased by someone else such as the team’s adult advisor.

Yes, but only during local practice and qualification flights.  During these flights you may use either a rail or a ¼-inch (or larger) diameter, 6-foot launch rod.  However, at the national Finals you will be required to use only a rail, rods will not be permitted.  The NAR will provide 6-foot 1-inch rails and a standard one-clip-pair per pad multi-pad launch system for all teams to use at the Finals. However, teams are welcome to bring their own launch systems, pads, etc., to launch their rocket during qualifications and at the Finals.

The only contest-approved altimeters for scoring are the Perfectflite Pnut and FireFly and the Jolly Logic Altimeter ONE and Altimeter TWO; your official score must come from the same altimeter design everyone else is using.

Other altimeters may be used for other purposes, such as flight control, but not for scoring.

The rules state that all American Rocketry Challenge rockets must be built and flown in accordance with the Model Rocket Safety Code of the National Association of Rocketry (NAR). Under this Code, you may only use lightweight, non-metal parts for the nose, body, and fins of your rocket, those parts which are the main structure of the vehicle. Major internal body parts which are rigidly attached to the body (such as rods that run a good fraction of the length of the body) are considered to be part of the “body” and may not be metal. Carbon, fiberglass, and plastics are all acceptable non-metallic building materials for any part of the rocket. You are allowed to use metal engine hooks, electronic circuit boards, and (if you wish) commercial re-loadable rocket engine casings.

You can fly a kit for practice and learning flights, but you must advance to an original design for your actual qualification and finals flights. For this official rocket you can use parts from several kits or any part you want from one kit, as long as you don’t use one complete kit with minimal modifications. We want to see originality and design effort go into the rocket that you compete with; it is a major learning objective for the American Rocketry Challenge.

You may not build the rocket motor. Your rocket must be powered only by commercially-made model rocket motors (F power level and below) that are listed on the official ARC Approved Motor List. You may not use a combination of rocket motors that contain more than a combined total of 80 Newton-seconds of total impulse.

None. The rocket that you enter into the American Rocketry Challenge must be entirely designed, built, and flown by the student members of the team.

You may get help from outside sources in learning how to build and fly rockets in general, use altimeters, do multi-staging of rockets, design launch systems, etc. You can buy or borrow launching systems. You can practice-fly with a local NAR section and learn how to become an expert rocket flier.

But when it is time to do your real design and either your qualification flight or your real flight at the fly-off, this must be done by team members alone. Supervising teachers/adults are not considered members of the team for this purpose.

There is not an American Rocketry Challenge requirement to document your engineering work that you do on your way to success, but we have found that teams that keep and use careful records do much better in the event and learn more from what they do.  Teams that do a good job explaining to supporters what they are doing and why it matters tend to get more financial and community support for their efforts.  Beyond the main flight performance-based competition, there are some other optional types of competition that you can enter as part of American Rocketry Challenge: the Presentation Competition and Marketing Competition (both open to all teams regardless of whether they make the Finals).  These have significant cash prizes.

You have two options.

1. Design your rocket to fly with the motors that are available to you, including using clusters of two or three of these motors (but not multi-staging).
2. Find a mail-order dealer (starting with those listed on the recommended vendors list on our website) who has the motors you want and can ship them to you.

No.  The score used for official purposes in the competition, both for qualification flights and the Finals, must be the number beeped or flashed out by the altimeter post-flight and nothing else.  Downloaded data can be used for post-flight analysis but not for scoring.

For purposes of determining if a motor is approved for the competition, only three things count: the manufacturer name, the labeled total impulse class, and the labeled average thrust designation.

The codes that count for our official purposes are the first letter (“E”, “F”, etc.) which indicates the motor’s total impulse class; and the one or two digits before the dash (“23”, “24”, etc.) which indicate the motor’s average thrust in Newtons.

Some manufacturers, particularly Aerotech, have other additional labeled designations such as “W”, “FJ”, “Econojet”, etc . The Aerotech letter coding is a proprietary indication of propellant chemical formulation and the extra words are just brand names.

The final digit or digits after the dash in a motor’s official designation indicate the motor’s delay time between motor propellant burnout and ejection charge activation, in seconds. There are a few cases where the value we list for delay time on the American Rocketry Challenge list is not the same as the delay time value that the manufacturer advertises in his catalog. This is because the motor delivered a different delay time (generally by one or two seconds) in the NAR’s official certification testing, after the manufacturer printed his catalog. We allow such motors for use in American Rocketry Challenge despite this minor delay-time marking discrepancy.

No. You must select a motor from the official Approved Motor List.

Yes, you would be violating the rules.

The flight vehicle must be made entirely by the student team members. Having a custom flight vehicle part fabricated by your teacher, by a composite or plastics or circuit-board printing company, or by a company that does custom fin cutting (even if it is to your design) does not constitute sale of a “standard off the-shelf product” and is not allowed. Having a mandrel fabricated to your specifications that you wrap fiberglass on to make your rocket body would be OK. In this case the company is making a tool that you are using to make the part that flies. Having parts made on a 3-dimensional printer would be OK as long as the students write the program and run the printer.  Starting this year, teams are permitted to get printed circuit boards that they have designed fabricated by a vendor.

The first instruction for the timers is to read the official rules section on “Duration Scoring”, which says, in part: “The duration score for each flight shall be based on total flight duration of the Capsule (portion of the rocket containing the eggs and altimeter), measured from first motion at liftoff from the launch pad until the moment that the first part of the Capsule touches the ground (or a tree) or until it can no longer be seen due to distance or to an obstacle. Times must be measured independently by two people not on the team, one of whom is the official NAR-member adult observer, using separate electronic stopwatches that are accurate to 0.01 seconds.”

This rule leaves a few details and situations unstated:

• If the rocket flies out of sight on boost, the timers should keep their stopwatches running until they gain sight of the rocket on recovery, and then proceed as described above.
• If only one timer sees it at first, he/she should coach the other onto the rocket and the other timer should keep his/her stopwatch running until he/she also gains sight. If he/she never gains sight independently, score his/her time as “lost” and use the time of the single timer, like the stopwatch malfunction situation described in the Rules.
• If neither timer ever sees the rocket, it has scored a “time lost” and does not count as an official flight (this will not be true at the fly-offs).
• Use of binoculars is OK (these will not be used at the fly-offs), but in the experience of the NAR these tend to hinder timers more than they help them for flights where the intended duration is only around 45 seconds.

Most teams have been using clips, hooks, or screw-on caps to retain the rocket motor in their rocket during flight, particularly when the ejection charge goes off, to make sure that when this charge goes off it blows the nose and parachute out rather than kicking the motor out instead.  However, some teams have continued to use tape on the motor casing to retain it in the rocket by friction alone.  This has proven to be a major source of unreliability and safety hazard for American Rocketry Challenge rockets, so we are now requiring a positive, non-friction, retention technique for the rocket motor.

It is permissible to have the motor mounting tube stick out a bit from the bottom of the rocket and the rocket motor to stick out a bit from that tube, and then wrap high-temperature tape (not masking tape, think Gorilla tape or similar) externally around both the exposed tube and motor casing as a means of positive, non-friction-based retention.  You may not glue your motor into the mount, though, it must be removable post-flight.

• For the 2025 competition, parachutes are required as recovery devices. The rocket must separate into two non-connected pieces for recovery, with one piece containing the eggs and altimeter and the other containing the rocket motor. Each piece must recover safely by one or more parachutes.

The rules specify that the eggs must weigh between 57 and 63 grams and be no more than 60 millimeters in length. This is usually a Grade A large, although not all such eggs fall within that weight and size range. We will weigh and provide the eggs at the Final Fly-off. It is the team’s responsibility to provide their own eggs in the proper weight/size range for practice and qualification flights.  These are hen’s eggs, by the way, not quail or ostrich eggs!

We want better craftsmanship! The National Finals are live-streamed – so your rocket should look ready for prime-time!

Paint, a decorative adhesive coating, or even felt-tip marker ink.  There will be a 5-point penalty assessed at check-in at the Finals only for any rocket that is not painted or decorated. Plastic (including 3D printed) or fiberglass parts are not required to have a coating applied.

An official NAR launch is preferred, but you can also use any adult NAR member in your local area or have an impartial adult (not related to any team member or affiliated with the school) join the NAR to do this, to avoid pre-fly-off long-distance travel.

Sport rocketry is one of the safest activities in the United States. Rockets flown in accordance with the common-sense Safety Code of the NAR are extremely safe. The rockets are powered by prepackaged, commercially-made, and rigorously NAR safety-tested solid fuel motors that are available at local hobby stores. The handbooks provided to each team provide all the guidelines and training any team needs to fly their rockets in complete safety. In addition, the NAR provides those individuals who choose to join the NAR with a $5 million liability insurance policy.  Teams with a teacher and one or more student members who join the NAR may charter themselves through the NAR as an official NAR “section” (club) and after this can then get this same insurance coverage for the owner of their launch site.

NAR membership is not required to participate in the American Rocketry Challenge. However, participants may find it beneficial to join the NAR for the $5 million insurance coverage for launches. The NAR has developed a special program for The American Rocketry Challenge. Under this program, if the supervising teacher joins at the regular adult (Senior) rate of $70 per year, the student members of the teacher’s team can join for $20, which is $10 off the regular rate of $30 for Junior (age 15 and under) or Young Adult (age 16-25) membership. Student members who take advantage of the discounted rate will not receive the Sport Rocketry magazine. Contact the NAR Headquarters manager ([email protected]) for more details.

The co-sponsor for this event is the National Association of Rocketry (NAR). The NAR has a nationwide network of local clubs with experienced rocketeers standing by to provide advice and make their launch sites available for your flights. Many adult NAR will be “mentors” and available to assist individual teams in their local area. If there is not a mentor in your local area, you may work with one in another state via phone or email. Please visit the American Rocketry Challenge section of the NAR website at www.nar.org for the latest list of mentors.

Model rockets weighing less than 3.3 pounds at liftoff and having in them only model rocket motors from the official The American Rocketry Challenge Approved Motor List that have no more than 4.4 ounces (125 grams) total of rocket propellant among them all require no Federal permits or permissions to purchase, possess, store, or fly.

You must fly model rockets in a manner that does not endanger aircraft in flight (see the NAR Safety Code in your ARC Handbook), but no FAA airspace notification or waiver is required to fly them and there is no restriction on how far away airports must be from where you fly them. Although model rocketry is legal in all 50 states, some local towns or counties have ordinances restricting or prohibiting model rocket flying.  Local fire marshals may also ban rocket flying temporarily during times of exceptionally high fire risk as part of a general “burn ban”.

If there is not a NAR section nearby, then you simply need to locate an open field of suitable size (approximately 1500 X 2000 feet), get permission from the landowner, and comply with any local laws regarding model rocketry. Model rocketry falls under the National Fire Protection Association’s Code 1122, which local fire officials should be familiar with.

There is a safety handout in the last appendix of The American Rocketry Challenge Handbook that you should read and can share with concerned landowners and public safety officials. If the landowner requires liability insurance, your team can obtain it by joining the NAR.

Some teams end up with no in-person mentor, either by choice or by necessity, and still manage to launch successful qualification flights. It’s just a little more difficult, not impossible. The American Rocketry Challenge Handbook and the week-by-week guide to what teams are supposed to be stepping through provide a lot of the guidance that a mentor would do in person, if they are read, understood, and followed. The “Handbook of Model Rocketry” by G. Harry Stine and Bill Stine is the best start-from-scratch text ever written on how to do model rocketry.

The rocketry companies listed in the Handbook that specifically cater to American Rocketry Challenge teams can help you on the phone in picking supplies and components if you still cannot interpret their catalogs after reading these resources.

The only place and time where you absolutely need a real live in-person NAR adult member is as the official observer for the local qualification flight(s) that come at the end of the team’s building and practicing, but no later than the annual qualification flight deadline

Your first place to look is the list of NAR local rocket launches on the NAR website. You can also find a list of NAR mentors in the “Pages” tab of the ARC registration portal. If the NAR launch list is not useful, try calling the nearest section. If this does not work and there is a NAR “mentor” nearby, ask him for help. It is OK to have an impartial adult who is not related to any member of the team and is not affiliated with the team’s school or employed by the sponsoring organization become an NAR member to be an observer.

However, it is always better to use an experienced rocketeer to do the observer duties, because they can offer advice and tips at the same time. If your team has a NAR mentor who is not related to anyone on the team or employed by the school, that mentor can also serve as your flight observer.

Yes, members of the same chapter or unit of a U.S. incorporated non-profit youth organization can form teams and enter the contest, as long as they are all students in 6th through 12th grades.  Eligibility is based on a student’s grade level in school, not their age.

Homeschoolers can enter as part of a school team with permission of that school’s principal, or they can enter by being part of a local chapter of a non-profit organization (Scouts, etc. but not an NAR or TRA club or any other incorporated rocket club or organization) outside of the school context.

If there is a local organization specifically for homeschoolers and at least one of the students is a member of this, this counts as a “non-profit organization” as well, as long as it is legally incorporated.

Yes, but when you register you must have at least three members on your team. Your application will be returned if it does not. You can add or remove team members later, up until the first qualification flight attempt, as long as you maintain a team size between three and ten total. After your first qualification flight, members may be dropped, but not added. You can find the Add/Drop form here.

Yes, but they cannot be added after the team’s first qualification attempt. The only exception to this is that if a school has more than three teams that have qualification scores better than the national selection cutoff score for the Finals, membership of the three teams from that school that are invited to the Finals may be adjusted to include students from other teams with qualification scores better than the cutoff (within the limit of ten students per team).  You can drop a team member at any point. You can find the  Add/Drop form here.

Yes! This is a great way to fund your team’s participation in the American Rocketry Challenge. Also, your sponsors may get national coverage if you qualify for the Finals and win the contest.

If you are using the Apogee RockSim commercial software, please contact them directly for this.

One hundred of the best teams from across the country will be invited to compete in the Finals on May 17, 2025, at Great Meadow, The Plains, VA. The registration fee for a team to attend the 2025 National Finals is $350.

We recommend reaching out to your local community to find sponsors.  If one of the 15+ sponsors or one of the 300+ AIA member companies has a facility near you reach out to their community relations team early on and get them involved in your rocket building process. Many companies are a great resource for site visits, expert advice, and financial resources. Also consider other organizations in your community that are supportive of education and technology and ask them to sponsor you.

The entire team does not necessarily have to come to the Finals, although we require at least one member plus the supervising teacher/adult, or parent of a team member, to attend if a team is selected. All teams selected for the finals must make their own travel and lodging arrangements. We have reserved blocks of motel rooms near the flying site at special rates for teams. This information will be provided to teams accepted for the Finals.

They got started early and they worked at the project steadily all year—time management is key! They flew lots of practice flights–in all weather conditions. They gathered a lot of data about how the weather, wind, and other factors affected each flight. They solicited help from local or online NAR mentors. They assigned specific responsibilities to each team member. They had great supervisors and most importantly, they had fun and never gave up.

Based on experience from previous years, teams that are fully successful and complete a good qualification will have flown at least 10 practice flights (and generally more) and have built several rockets. The total cost of entry fee, rocket motors and rocket parts to do this is typically between $800 and $1000.  Costs to attend the Finals ($350 registration fee and travel) are additional.  Costs can be minimized if rocket supplies are purchased from our recommended vendors and if an NAR mentor helps the team make appropriate and economical choices of what to buy.  It is possible to spend less than $800 if the team is only makes a few flights, or more if the team does an exceptionally large number of practice flights.

If your school or organization requires you to provide an IRS W-9 form for AIA to your bookkeeper, you can download one from this page. Team advisors and bookkeepers can request a W-9 via our contact form.

• Teams of 3-10 students currently enrolled in grades 6 through 12 (regardless of age).
• The application for a team must come from a single school or a single U.S. incorporated non-profit youth organization (excluding the National Association of Rocketry, Tripoli Rocketry Association, or any other rocket club or organization).
• There is no limit to the number of teams that may be entered from any single school or organization, but no more than the best two containing students who attend the same school or who are members of the same organization, regardless of whether the teams are sponsored by that school or organization, will be invited to attend the Finals.
• Teams may have members from other schools or other organizations.
• Teams must be supervised by an adult approved by the principal of the school, or by an officially-appointed adult leader of the youth organization.