Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics

Just after 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22, a new era of space travel began just after 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 22, when uncrewed lunar lander Odysseus, or Odie for short, touched down on the Moon's surface.

The National Academy of Engineering has elected Noel T. Clemens, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, to the academy for 2024. Christine Schmidt, who received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from UT and later served on the University’s faculty from 1996 to 2012, has also been elected.

In new research, an all-woman group of authors from five different institutions published an anthology of all the important data unearthed by laser altimetry over the last two decades.

Lori Magruder, an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics (ASE/EM), has been named director of the Center for Space Research (CSR), effective Jan. 1. Prior to becoming director, she served as associate director of research and communications from 2020 – 2022, then as the center’s interim director throughout 2023. Srinivas Bettadpur served as previous director from 2018 – 2023.

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming embedded in many industries, and aerospace is no exception.

A new agreement with NASA paves the wave for researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Spacecraft Laboratory to build and launch a small satellite network with embedded machine learning technology to help spacecraft figure out their location in relationship to the Earth and, eventually, the moon. That will ultimately help ensure more accurate navigation and landing.

Steel is one of the world’s most useful and valuable materials, but its production is among the most carbon-intensive manufacturing processes. Steel accounts for roughly 7% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, part of a broader industrial sector that accounted for about 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2021, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

A new case study using computational modeling predicts minimal effects on increasing hurricane storm surge in surrounding Texas Gulf Coast communities as a byproduct of proposed depth increase of the Corpus Christi Ship Channel near Aransas Pass.

The University of Texas at Austin and Infleqtion, a global quantum technologies company, have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a new center of excellence for quantum manufacturing. With the recent opening of its flagship corporate office in Austin, Infleqtion will work with UT’s Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE), collaborate with the University’s faculty experts in photonics and quantum technologies, and draw upon its world-class facilities to scale domestic manufacturing capacity for quantum-enabled products in areas such as energy, navigation, defense, and health care.

Todd Humphreys, a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, is the recipient of the 2023 Johannes Kepler Award from the Institute of Navigation.

The University of Texas at Austin is collaborating with three other institutions to build the foundation for space operations to, from and throughout the Earth and moon neighborhood. This area, called the cislunar region, is an enormous, three-dimensional volume of space with many complex factors to be incorporated by mission planners and spacecraft designers.

The University of Texas at Austin will spearhead a groundbreaking research collaboration to advance the U.S. Air Force’s ability to understand and monitor activity in cislunar space. The project itself, officially named the “Representations, Theory, and Algorithms for Autonomous Space Domain Awareness in the Cislunar Regime,” seeks to tackle the intricate complications of monitoring and controlling activities within the expansive region between Earth and the moon.

Aerospace engineering alumnus Andreas Mogensen took to the stars today, flying his second trip to the International Space Station (ISS) where he is serving as the mission pilot and space station crew commander for the Huginn Mission.

The six-month mission includes astronauts from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russia’s Roscosmos. Mogensen will conduct more than 30 experiments for the ESA during the mission divided into three pillars: climate, health and space for Earth. He will also collaborate with team members on experiments for other space agencies.

Researchers have modified a commercial virtual reality headset, giving it the ability to measure brain activity and examine how we react to hints, stressors and other outside forces.

The research team at The University of Texas at Austin created a noninvasive electroencephalogram (EEG) sensor that they installed in a Meta VR headset that can be worn comfortably for long periods. The EEG measures the brain's electrical activity during the immersive VR interactions.

When new technology meets the real world, dynamic challenges threaten to derail progress, like a self-driving car that struggles to perceive rapid changes in the environment and adjust.

When it comes to achieving career goals, Stephanie Wilson is a great example to follow.

She has taken part in three space missions as a NASA astronaut, spending a combined 42 days in space during that time.

Today, foldable phones are ubiquitous. Now, using models that predict how well a flexible electronic device will conform to spherical surfaces, engineers from The University of Texas at Austin and University of Wisconsin–Madison could usher in a new era in which these bendy devices can integrate seamlessly with parts of the human body.

Space debris expert and Texas Engineer Moriba Jah has earned the rare honor of being elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland’s National Academy. RSE elected 91 total fellows for 2023, but only six from outside the United Kingdom.

Texas Engineers are leading a multi-university research team that will build technology and tools to improve measurement of important climate factors by observing atoms in outer space. 

They will focus on the concept of quantum sensing, which use quantum physics principles to potentially collect more precise data and enable unprecedented science measurements.

Scientists have called for a legally binding treaty to ensure Earth’s orbit isn’t irreparably harmed by the future expansion of the global space industry.

In the week that nearly 200 countries agreed to a treaty to protect the High Seas after a 20-year process, the experts believe society needs to take the lessons learned from work to preserve Earth’s oceans and apply them to the planet’s orbit. Writing in the journal Science, an international collaboration of experts in the fields of satellite technology and ocean plastic pollution argue for the urgent need for global consensus on how best to govern Earth’s orbit.