Posted Jul 23, 2026

 

Dear MDRA Student Flyers,

 

We wanted to make you aware of several updates and important changes for the upcoming 2026–2027 flying season:

 

University Team Flight Fees: Team membership dues and flight fees are $100 per year. Please pay the fee online before arriving at the field and bring proof of payment/membership with you. These dues ONLY cover team projects (Examples: Spaceport America cup or NASA SLI test flights, special university projects, team liquid motors, team static fires, etc.). These new dues go into effect August 1st 2026, no additional payment is necessary for teams which have already paid team dues for the 2026 flying season.

 

Student Memberships for Certifications: Any students wishing to pursue an individual Level 1 (L1) and/or Level 2 (L2) certification must be paying members of MDRA. The annual student membership fee is $20 and there are no additional flight fees for student certification flights. These new dues requirements go into effect August 1st 2026.

 

Certification Forms: All L1 and L2 certification forms must be submitted at least 8 days prior to the scheduled launch weekend. Each certification form must be completed individually and include as much detail as possible. While many rockets are built as a group, each student must describe their build in their own words. Rocket weights should also be unique, as no two builds are exactly the same, even when using the same kit. Copy and paste certification submissions are unacceptable.

 

Team Projects: University team flights must submit the Special Projects Form at least 8 days prior to the scheduled launch weekend, this includes static fires and ground tests.

 

Daily Certification Limit: Due to the significant increase in university certification flights, MDRA can accommodate a maximum of 5 L1 and 2 L2 student certification flights per school, per launch day. If your school has more than seven students seeking certification, please plan to spread the flights across both days of the launch weekend or over several months. If you have questions about certification capacity, please contact us well in advance of your intended launch dates.

 

University Certification Day:  MDRA is considering holding a University Certification Day dedicated exclusively to student certification flights. If we offered such an event, would you be interested in participating instead of flying during a regular launch weekend? This special day would allow certification officials and board members to be more hands on with each student, helping ease the burden during the heavy flying season, as well as hopefully inmproving the success rate of student certification attempts. While the events would mainly be focused on level 1 flights, we could accommodate Level 2 and Level 3 flights through both Tripoli and NAR.

 

The proposed dates would be:

Mid-October on a Sunday

Mid-March on a Saturday

 

Please let us know if this is something you or your team would be interested in attending, as we want to gauge interest before we engage the land owners to firm up potential dates.

 

University Launch Guide: MDRA flyer and NAR Junior Board member Sunjum Mehta has written a very informative guide for university flyers, that we encourage you to read! This guide is found on the NAR website: https://nar.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=114127&item_id=127381

 

Thank you and we look forward to another great flying season!

Best regards,

MDRA Board of Directors