NJIT Highlander Model Rocket is a Transformer, Becomes Drone, Lands Itself
The NJIT Rocketry Club is experimenting with a model that autonomously lands itself standing up, a la SpaceX, but accomplished through novel methods.
SpaceX rockets fire their liquid fuel thrusters while descending. Other hobbyists have already tried to duplicate that method, so the Highlanders devised a unique approach: next year, they want to make the nose cone of their Project Lotus rocket unfold like flower petals, revealing a drone that takes control.
It’s a new path in model rocketry, where nose cones typically pop open to expose a simple parachute. Hobbyists have done it this way since the 1950s, including at NJIT, when students from the original Newark College of Engineering formed a group called Rocket Society in 1957.
The idea for smart drone control evolved jointly from the club’s co-advisors — senior university lecturer Mark Chiusano, in information systems , and adjunct instructor Olumuyiwa Bamisaye, in mechanical engineering — and also with input from students, such as club president Ranu Baylor and project manager Matthew Tujague.
Baylor, an Albert Dorman Honors College sophomore, leads about 30 active members. He studies applied physics and math, with a minor in electrical engineering. Baylor explained that his inspiration for aeronautics and astronomy began in childhood, as he grew up in Bowie, Md. just a few miles from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He also attended a space-focused summer camp through the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He didn’t get his hands on a working model until 2024, but when that finally happened, “I need to bring this to NJIT,” he thought. He and other students were using a telescope on the campus green when they met Chiusano, and the club formed.
Tujague, a junior computer science major from Middletown, brought the software knowledge to the club. He led other members in winter research to see what it would take to bring their drone idea to life. Some of the basics are open-source software for rocket design and flight simulation, along with microcontrollers and precise sensors aboard the rocket, “We have all of the electronics right now,” he said, which flew on a test flight in Bridgewater’s North Branch Park recently. They included an on-board camera, and a radio transmitter to share real-time flight data.
Both student leaders said they enjoy different aspects of their roles, such as designing parts at the NJIT Makerspace, organizing sub-projects and working with other groups. In addition to completing Project Lotus, they’re aiming to compete in the International Rocket Engineering Competition, as of 2026. Launching rockets with multiple stages and higher power levels is also on the agenda.
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Some club members, spanning all of NJIT’s colleges, are content just to build and fly their own rockets for recreation. The club supports them. However, Chiusano said their work, like the rockets themselves, can always go higher. “It's a dynamic club and it gives students an opportunity to go way past the classroom,” he noted. He recalled watching the moon landing on TV as a child, and now observes that their autonomous drone landing methods and research could someday be used on larger craft that carry cargo or passengers. “This is not a game. Anyone can launch this rocket. What we’re doing is way past that … This is just the starting point.”
Ranu is aiming for the highest level of all — he dreams of becoming an astronaut. If successful, he would follow Newark College of Engineering student Wally Schirra, who studied here in the 1940s and flew on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.
The university has additional cosmic connections, such as when famed scientist Werhner von Braun sent a commencement letter in 1961. Newark College of Engineering president Robert van Houten, in that year's Nucleus yearbook, told students: "[W]hen the Class of 1961 — your class — entered college in September, 1957, no satellites or Sputniks were circling the earth. Today, as I write this message, about six months in advance of its publication, nineteen are in orbit, to say nothing of others which have completed their prescribed cycles and then perished in the atmosphere."
More recently, NJIT joined the McNair Scholars program, named for the Black astronaut who died in the Challenger tragedy; history professor Neil Maher published a book, Apollo in the Age of Aquarius; the university began space weather research programs; and assistant professor Raja Roy taught a course on space entrepreneurship.
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