The University of Texas at El Paso’s Sun City Summit Rocket Team won first place at the Lone Star Cup, according to an April 17 announcement. This marks the team’s second consecutive victory in the statewide collegiate rocketry competition, with this year’s achievement notable for being accomplished by a five-member, all-women cohort.
The Lone Star Cup took place on March 28 at the Tripoli North Texas Launch Site. The event challenges college teams from across Texas to build rockets that reach a target altitude as precisely as possible. UTEP’s team reached an apogee of 5,695 feet—just five feet short of their projected goal of 5,700 feet—while the second-place team missed its target by about 320 feet. The UTEP group did not conduct a test launch before the competition.
Kenith Meissner, Ph.D., dean of the UTEP Miguel A. Loya College of Engineering, said: “What stands out about this achievement is the level of confidence the team had in their engineering process. With Dust Devil, they deliver that degree of accuracy, reflecting careful design, strong analytical work and a deep understanding of the system they built. This is exactly the kind of hands-on, high-level experience that prepares our students to solve complex challenges in the real world.”
Team members included Hazel Perea (manufacturing lead), Priscila Garnica (systems engineering lead), Viriany Cobos (media lead), Rebecca Herrera (co-lead engineer), and Idhaly Torres (co-project manager). Herrera said: “It made a lot of sense because Idhaly and I will be in leadership next semester, so we need more experience; we need to be exposed to competition the most. The other three members…had also previously traveled to IREC…you need people who already have experience in a competition environment. It all came down to experience.”
Torres emphasized precision was crucial for success: “Every single gram counts.” She added: “We were the ones who already had the experience; we were the ones who designed the rocket; we were the ones who knew how to work around it, its imperfections, and how everything is supposed to go.”
The UTEP team competed against universities such as Texas A&M University and UT Arlington. Their performance serves as preparation for larger competitions like June’s International Rocket Engineering Competition at Midland Spaceport.
Looking ahead, Sun City Summit is developing a new rocket intended for an altitude goal of 30,000 feet for upcoming international events.
