Aeronautics and Astronautics

Expert in mechanics of materials recognized for lifetime contributions to the field.

Richard Christensen, a professor emeritus of aeronautics and astronautics, has been selected as the 2013 recipient of the Timoshenko Medal by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), among the highest honors in the field of applied mechanics.

Last modified Tue, 14 May, 2013 at 16:40

The School of Engineering China programs aim to enhance engineering education by providing undergraduate, co-term, master's, and PhD students with an opportunity to learn about China and to gain meaningful volunteer experience in a culturally diverse and international environment.

Last modified Thu, 9 May, 2013 at 16:13

Assistant Professor will study the behaviors of plasmas created when tiny meteoroids and space debris are vaporized in hypervelocity collisions with spacecraft.

Sigrid Close, an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics in the School of Engineering, has received a 2013 Early Career Research Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The five-year grants bolster exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, a period when many scientists do their most formative work.

Last modified Wed, 8 May, 2013 at 13:01

EdX will be available as an open source learning platform on June 1. In support of that move, Stanford will integrate features of its existing Class2Go open source online learning platform into the edX platform.

Stanford University will collaborate with edX, the nonprofit online learning enterprise founded by Harvard and MIT, to advance the development of edX's open source learning platform and continue to provide free and open online learning tools for institutions around the world.

Last modified Wed, 3 Apr, 2013 at 9:32

Several large asteroids have zipped dangerously close to Earth in the past month. Scott Hubbard is part of a team that plans to track down future threats.

On Saturday, an asteroid the size of one and a half football fields flew within 240,000 miles of Earth. If the space rock had hit land, it would have leveled an area the size of San Francisco Bay. If it had hit the Pacific Ocean, the impact would have sent a tsunami to every facing shore.

But what is perhaps most alarming about this particular asteroid, called 2013 ET, is that, until March 3, no one had any idea it was headed toward Earth.

Last modified Tue, 12 Mar, 2013 at 13:55

The large meteoroid that struck Russia last week is just one of the factors in space that cause satellites to fail. Sigrid Close, a Stanford Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is proving that the effects of "space dust" are a more likely cause.

New research by Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics assistant professor Sigrid Close suggests she’s on track to solve a mystery that has long bedeviled space exploration: Why do satellites fail?

Last modified Mon, 25 Feb, 2013 at 16:55

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions an engineer can receive.

Eight professors from the Stanford University School of Engineering are among the newly elected National Academy of Engineering (NAE) members, the NAE said today.

Last modified Thu, 7 Feb, 2013 at 16:51

Researchers at the Center for Turbulence Research set a new record in supercomputing, harnessing a million computing cores to model supersonic jet noise. Work was performed on the newly installed Sequoia IBM Bluegene/Q system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.

Stanford Engineering's Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) has set a new record in computational science by successfully using a supercomputer with more than one million computing cores to solve a complex fluid dynamics problem—the prediction of noise generated by a supersonic jet engine.

Last modified Tue, 29 Jan, 2013 at 18:44

The term "astronaut" derives from the Greek words meaning "space sailor," and refers to all who have been launched as crew-members aboard NASA spacecraft bound for orbit and beyond. In the 50-year history of the NASA space program, only 45 of the 525 astronauts have been women. Seven of these women have degrees from Stanford – a truly impressive record from a single school.  

Last modified Thu, 10 Jan, 2013 at 13:17

Letter from the Dean of Stanford Engineering.

As Dean, I am frequently asked, what is Stanford Engineering’s secret? What has made the school so successful, not just in recent decades but over its 87-year history?

Last modified Fri, 11 Jan, 2013 at 13:40