DESERT WINDS
About
Desert winds is Sunride’s first liquid fuelled rocket aimed to be launched this summer at FAR in California. We are building this rocket around a flight optimised version of our recently hot-fired Sunfire III ‘Sandy’ bipropellant engine. After hot-firing Sandy 3 times on 14th March 2024, the engine achieved the highest thrust out of any UK collegiate team with a thrust of 4.4kN.
Desert Winds uses a concentric tank piston architecture and is one of the first rockets to do so in Europe. This aims to simplify the rocket and ground support as much as possible to increase the chance of success.
Testing
On April 24th 2024, the Sunfire Feed team started with hydrostatic testing at the Buxton test site.
Three hydrostatic tests were carried out and for the second test, the tank held a steady pressure just above 70 bar for 30 minutes. The team then moved onto cold flow testing. You can watch our first attempt on our YouTube channel.
