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!
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?
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.
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!