TryEngineering Tuesday: Aerospace Engineering

Blast off into the engineering world of air and space! Aerospace Engineering is a launching point for people who want to design and build vehicles that fly. The field is divided into two areas, vehicles that fly within the Earth’s atmosphere, which is called aeronautics, and vehicles that fly in space, which is called astronautics. 

Because of the sophistication of today’s aircraft, rockets, and spacecraft, it takes a team of engineers from many different disciplines to build these vehicles.  For example, a mechanical engineer might design the engine, a civil engineer would design the structure and a computer engineer would develop the flight control computer. 

Aerospace vehicles contain many different systems that include communication, navigation, radar, and life support. This makes aerospace engineering an exciting field to explore!

• Watch Walt Downing and Francesca Filippini, from IEEE Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society (AESS), as they share about their aerospace work in the TryEngineering Tuesday: Aerospace Webinar.
• Hear from Aldo Spadoni on a Day In The Life of an Aerospace Engineer and read an article from TryEngineering Together, about  Aldo, Real Life Rocket Scientist: An Interview with Aldo Spadoni, Mechanical Engineer. 
• Read Shoot for the Stars: An Interview with Burt Dicht, Mechanical Engineer a TryEngineering Together article and watch an Engineering Spotlight interview with Burt Dicht.
• Women have made enormous contributions to the field of Aerospace. Read about some of these amazing women in the TryEngineering Together article, Women in Space.

• The Apollo program, which successfully sent six United States manned missions to the moon, did much more than propel humans into space: It sparked an array of modern inventions sold for commercial use today. Check out the “20 Inventions We Wouldn’t Have Without Space Travel” infographic from NASA.  What invention are you most surprised by? 
• Read about the famous United States Apollo 11 mission to the moon in the TryEngineering Together article, Apollo 11: The Eagle Has Landed.
• Create a Straw Rocket or Balloon Rocket by following these lessons from NASA.
• Learn about Radar, its history and connection to aircrafts, ships and weather! For our secondary students, try this Build a Coffee-Can Radar activity from MIT and IEEE Spectrum
• Explore the TryEngineering.org Blast Off Lesson Plan and how engineers have developed rocket ships over the years. Learn about the principles of rocketry by constructing and launching a model rocket from a kit. 
• Check out Curiosity on robotics.IEEE.org, a robotic rover that landed on Mars in August 2012.  
• Read about NASA’s Lucy Mission and Lucy’s story. Learn about the Lucy in Space competition to spur an understanding of human exploration and discovery.

Be Inspired by hearing how your peers are making a difference in their communities and then try it yourself! 

• NASA’s Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge is an all-virtual, global hackathon. During a period of 48 hours, more than 15,000 entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, artists, and technologists from 150 countries created more than 2,000 virtual teams.  Check out the amazing NASA Space Apps Covid-19 Challenge Winners.  
• NASA’s citizen science projects are collaborations between scientists and anyone interested in making important scientific discoveries. Want to work on some real NASA science? Check out some of the awesome projects like Fireballs in The Sky, where you can report sightings of fireballs to help NASA understand the early workings to the solar system. 

Have a different idea on how to make a positive difference in your community? Be creative! Then share with the TryEngineering family to inspire others to do the same.

• Write down at least one thing you learned about Aerospace Engineering. 
• Think about how to inspire others and make a difference in your community.  
• Have you, a family member, or teacher share your work on Facebook or Twitter using #tryengineeringtuesday. We want to hear from you!  

Thank you to the IEEE Aerospace and Electronics Systems Society (AESS) for making this TryEngineering Tuesday possible!