Commercial electric match ignitors typically require ~12 Volts to fire, which exceeded the power budget of our 98 mm sustainer stage's flight computer. To address this, I co-led a project to design and manufacture custom low-power ignitors. We formulated a composition of boron (fuel), potassium nitrate (oxidizer), and a resin-isocyanate binder, which successfully ignited after our second batch of making them, and was used to ignite the sustainer of our 2-stage rocket.

In February 2025, we launched our first 2-stage rocket, which had a sustainer ignition failure due to its ignitor falling out of the aft end of the motor. This resulted in the rocket only hitting a flight apogee of 1700 feet. To combat this, I co-led the development of head-end ignition. This involved designing for the ignitor to feed in through forward end of the sustainer motor by sealing it with Red RTV Silicone and epoxy, and testing the system through 2 nominal static fire tests. We then used the head-end ignition system for our re-launch of the rocket in March 2025, resulting in a sustainer ignition success and a flight apogee of 4800 feet.