How a college rocketry team professionally tested a YC startup's heat shield
SEDS UCSD — a university rocketry team — used Daqstra to run an industry-standard static fire test for Dispatch, a Y Combinator–backed aerospace startup developing thermal protection systems. Daqstra was embedded throughout the entire test campaign: from component characterisation through final static fire in the Mojave Desert. When an earlier alcohol fire damaged hardware, Daqstra's preserved data enabled rapid root-cause analysis and the platform's modular design allowed the team to rebuild and retest on schedule.
The challenge
SEDS UCSD was contracted to provide propulsion test support for Dispatch — a startup building heat shields for reentry vehicles. The test required coordinated sensor monitoring, automated valve sequencing, and real-time data logging across a multi-instrument setup in a remote desert environment. No commercial solution handled the full stack without bespoke integration work.
What Daqstra did
Daqstra was embedded throughout the entire testing cycle rather than added as an afterthought. The platform handled sensor orchestration, valve sequencing, and contextualised data logging from the first component characterisation runs through the final static fire. When an alcohol fire damaged hardware mid-campaign, Daqstra's complete data record enabled root-cause analysis within hours — and its modular architecture let the team replace hardware and resume testing without losing campaign continuity.