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Sunride Rocketry Team
The University of Sheffield
The Diamond, 32 Leavygreave Rd,
Broomhall, Sheffield, S3 7RD
United Kingdom

Email: sunride-group@sheffield.ac.uk

ABOUT 

SunrIde is Sunride is an extracurricular rocket engineering project at the University of Sheffield. The team contains over 80 members ranging from first year undergraduates to PhD students. The overall goal of the project is to make space engineering more accessible to students in the UK, and to become the first UK student-led team to launch a rocket to an altitude of 100km, or the “Kármán line”, the internationally recognised boundary to  space.

The team currently holds the UK Open Altitude Record at 36,274 ft. During this summer, we will attempt to set this record even higher with the launch of our flagship two-stage rocket, Karman Alpha, in California.


a non-profit research team formed and run by students from the University of Sheffield in the UK. In 2019, we achieved a major accomplishment when we broke the UK’s 19-year-long altitude record at 36,274ft. This breakthrough was widely covered by national and international media news, leading to an expansion of our community to 80+ young engineers, all working on various rocketry projects. 

We are committed to sharing what we know with the world. We strive to provide hands-on rocketry and space technologies experience to our members and the general public through our 40-hour training course on rocketry, which has attracted 200 students as of 2022 and is being shared to five different universities across the UK. The course is open to everyone interested in rocketry and space engineering. 

On top of this, we are collaborating with faculty members to provide teaching opportunities to local schools on building miniature rockets to improve access to aerospace and STEM earlier in the educational timeline. 

Our activities span across performance rocketry (Karman Alpha series, Jocelyn, Dart) to liquid propulsion (SunFire Engines). We are also working with The Universities of Oxford, York and Liverpool on a refurbishment project to develop a high altitude ride-share programme, which will enable secondary school pupils in the local area to design and build small scientific payloads to launch on our rocket. 

Sheffield Space Initiative

The Sheffield Space Initiative (SSI) was founded in 2017 to further engage in the science and engineering challenges involved in the exploration of space. 

It is a highly cross-disciplinary group of projects that are now developing a real heritage of success for Sheffield and our STEM students in particular. It aims to share knowledge and experience of this exciting industry through research-led teaching methods. 

SSI has now also forged partnerships with other institutions in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and America. 

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

2022-23

Zefy Pissaki

Project Manager

Sam Scott

Avionics Lead

Tom Danvers 

Avionics Lead

Sam Lyon

SunFire Team Principal

Brandon Sharkley

Avionics Lead

Lawrence Jones

Analysis Lead

Merlin Reeves-Dyer

Karman Alpha Technical lead

Emma Patterson 

Systems Lead


Yannis Papaioannou

Integration lead

Sam Beaumont

Jocelyn Technical Lead


2021

Abdel Alomari

Project lead

Dana Arabiyat

Project lead

Jakub Mech

Project Technical lead

Alec Dent

Project Mission lead

Operations Manager

Avionics lead


Georgios Rontogiannis

SS2S design lead and treasurer

SS2S Manufacturing lead

Alex Santos

Vesna manufacturing lead

Principle Aerodynamics engineer

2020

Project lead

Georgios Rontogiannis

SS2S design lead and treasurer

SS2S Manufacturing lead

Alex Santos

Vesna manufacturing lead

Principle Aerodynamics engineer

2019

Vishan Nair

Project lead

Konstantinos Ioannou

Technical lead

Dimitris Boufidis

Media and communications

2018

Jae Hyun Lim

Project lead

Ankita Kalra

Project lead

ADVISORY BOARD

Prof Viktor Fedun

Project Supervisor

Dr Gary Verth

Dr Alistair John

Team Supervisor

Dr Istvan Ballai

Team Consultant

Paulina Adzgauskaite

Team Consultant

Mr Ben Appleby

Team Consultant

Ms Maya Pourpoutidi

3D Artist