We are a space student society at the University of Exeter. We pride ourselves on being a friendly and welcoming environment to all students interested in space no matter who they are or what they study. Our society was founded in 2015 to work on the XRT-C, a project to build a student-operated radio telescope.

Nowadays, our society focuses on four main areas: Stargazing, Outreach, Projects and Socials. If you want to get involved, you will find our socials and our memberships at the bottom of this page.

We host regular stargazing nights for our members in Exeter during term time. Our society telescope, S.T.E.V.I.E., is an 8-inch Dobsonian Sky-Watcher that provides fantastic views of the night sky to our members during term time.

We also have a strong commitment to outreach work, both within the student body and for the wider community, as shown by our popular yearly Space Exe Conference with guests such as science communicator Simon Clark, and our attendance at events like the Sidmouth Science Festival. At these events, we seek to engage the general public about the history of astronomy and some of the amazing ongoing research. We have run outreach stall with hands-on demonstrations and presented talks on topics like ‘Fictional Planets and Science Communication’ or ‘Martian Weather Forecasting’.

Today, our project work focuses on rocketry and a High Altitude Weather Balloon (HAB). The society has competed in the UKSEDS National Rocketry Competition multiple times and came runners up in 2020, although we now focus more on model rockets which can be launched around Exeter. The HAB project is a work in progress with the aim of launching it soon to measure the concentration of greenhouse gases and the general vertical structure of the atmosphere.

In addition, we run a number of casual socials like pub trips or space-themed movie nights for our members to relax and socialise away from their studies. If you are or will be a student at the University of Exeter and you’d like to be involved in any of the work we do or just want to socialise with like-minded people, then this is definitely the right place for you!

Stay Spacey!

– The Space Exe Committee