Cambium composites are launched into space via USCRPL rocket
Boattail component delivery helped USCRPL’s Daybreak rocket reach space, marking the first U.S. student team to launch and recover a rocket as a space payload provider.
Daybreak launch, Black Rock Desert, April 11, 2026. Source | USCRPL
In April 2026, Cambium’s (El Segundo, Calif., U.S.) novel high-temperature composite material was successfully launched into space on a rocket built by the University of Southern California Rocket Propulsion Laboratory’s (USCRPL) Daybreak rocket mission. Launched from a site in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, Daybreak successfully reached space and was fully recovered intact after re-entry.
Cambium delivered the custom product for this mission — the rocket component known as a “boattail,” an aerodynamic shroud for the rocket nozzle — 2 weeks after receiving specifications, with launch occurring 4 weeks later. Cambium’s high-temperature materials protected the space craft while also enabling USCRPL to extend the length of its payload bay, a critical design advancement that will expand the utility of this space carrier for future scientific and research missions. This mission marks the first time a team of university students has successfully launched and recovered a rocket as a space payload provider.
“Giving students hands-on experience with advanced and novel materials like these is what our lab strives to do and we couldn’t have asked for a better partnership,” notes USCPRL head of operations Owen Dowden. “We look forward to working with Cambium in the future as they continuously advance and expand their product line while we push the boundaries of amateur rocketry.”
USCRPL is a highly accomplished U.S. student rocketry program, with a track record of pushing boundaries in propulsion, structures and systems integration. Since becoming the first collegiate team to launch a rocket to space with Traveler IV in 2019, the lab has set its sights on executing missions to carry scientific and research missions and payloads into space.
Cambium’s differentiation is not any single class of advanced materials but a distinctive development approach, offering customers every aspect of molecular discovery, product development, certification and qualification, and rapid scalable manufacturing across the U.S. and Europe, all under one roof.
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