Rayane

5 October 2026

Meet Firehorn 2: 6.2 metres, 95 kg dry, and the biggest rocket the EPFL Rocket Team has ever built!

The rocket was unveiled at SPOT in front of around 200 guests. The evening included addresses from EPFL President Anna Fontcuberta i Morral and Emmanuelle David, Executive Director of the EPFL Space Center. Much of the audience came from industry, including representatives from APCO Technologies, Skyguide and AeroSuisse, a sign of the growing ties between the team and the Swiss aerospace sector.

Firehorn 2 will compete at EuRoC 2026, the European Rocketry Challenge, in the liquid 3 km category. Teams are judged on how close they get to their target altitude, on the safe recovery of the rocket, and on the quality of their engineering and technical reports.

For the team, this flight has a score to settle. Last year, its predecessor Firehorn 1 became the first Swiss cryogenic liquid rocket to fly, but an avionics fault cut the flight short: the rocket failed to register its own launch and triggered a safety shutdown of the engine. The parachutes deployed as planned, but most of the rocket was lost to a fire after landing.

Firehorn 2 is only one step in a longer journey. Its modular architecture can be scaled toward flights of up to 30 km, and the team is aiming for a space-shot by 2030. Getting there means finding a launch site cleared for higher altitudes and pushing Firehorn 2 further with each flight.

To support that journey, ERT has launched a support campaign that you can find on their website.

The EPFL Space Center team, which supervises the Rocket Team and follows its progress with great interest, is immensely proud of these students. They have been working tirelessly to reach their goals, and Firehorn 2 (what a huge and beautiful rocket!) shows just how brilliant and ambitious they are. We wish them better luck than last year, and we are all behind them for EuRoC 2026!

Stay tuned for updates on the campaign via ERT's social media.