The Queen Mary Students for the Exploration and Discovery of Space (QMSEDS) society recently returned to the annual UKSEDS Satellite Design Competition at Airbus Defence and Space Centre in Stevenage, and took home the award for Best Presentation.

Our team competed against teams from universities across the UK, including Bristol and Surrey.

Well done to the students who presented their work at the conference: Andreas Poimenidis, Joost Hubbard, Brandon Rutagamirwa, Jarifa Shah, Arrin Fernandes and Ayash Rath. The team was led by Joshua Amar (Team Lead) and Emmanuel Airiofolo (Vice Team Lead).

Joost shared his experience on LinkedIn saying “After months of work across different teams and subsystems at QMSEDS, it all came together for the final integration and test. We worked from Friday night right through to the competition on Saturday, after the team faced issues during assembly. We went from a non-functional bundle of melted wires to a functional satellite with both control and software running - all in under 5 hours (and at 4am).”

The society have maintained this win following their successful first competition as a new team in 2024.

Founder and President of QMSEDS, Emma Nicolai said “It was a great opportunity for Queen Mary students to showcase their engineering skills on a national stage.”

“We're aiming to return next year and continue growing both technically and as a society.”