Matthew Lennard and Cameron Parker, both undergraduates in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, are members of SunrIde, the only UK team to compete in the Spaceport America Cup 2018 in New Mexico.
After a successful launch on Saturday, SunrIde (Sheffield University Nova Rocket Innovation Design Engineering) received the Best Accurate Altitude Award at the competition, beating teams from Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Spaceport America Cup is the world's largest intercollegiate rocket engineering conference and competition, and took place between 19 and 23 June 2018.
Matthew and Cameron were part of a 26-strong team of team of undergraduates and postgraduate students, who were advised by Dr Gary Verth in Mathematics and Statistics and Dr Viktor Fedun in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering.
The two maths students worked on essential pre-launch calculations and got hands-on with building the rocket, named Amy after aviation pioneer and University of Sheffield graduate Amy Johnson.
They found their way into the SunrIde team through their lecturer Dr Sam Dolan who leads the Scientific Computing and Simulation that Matthew and Cameron took in their second year, and who worked with Dr Verth to secure funding for the project.
SunrIde follows on from the success of the science and engineering students behind SunbYte, another rocket project launched as part of the European Space Agency's REXUS/BEXUS programme.