AIAA Leadership 2018 AIAA Election Results

AIAA is pleased to announce the results of its 2018 Council of Directors election. The newly elected council members are:

• Director–Aerospace Sciences Group: D. Brett Ridgely

• Director– Aerospace Design & Structures Group: Carlos Cesnik

• Director–Region III: Daniel Jensen

• Director–Region VI: Jeffery Puschell

The newly elected council members will begin their terms of office on 3 May 2018.

AIAA Foundation Students from Abuja, Nigeria, Participate in FIRST LEGO League Challenge

The Geniuses Team sponsored by the AIAA Foundation showing off their Hydro Dynamics project and core valves. Credit: Odyssey Educational Foundation

Every year, the FIRST LEGO League releases a challenge, which is based on a real-world scientific topic, and puts students’ problem solving and critical thinking skills to the test. The 2017/2018 challenge is about Hydro Dynamic, where teams learned all about water – how we find, transport, use, or dispose of it. Students ages 9 to 16 from various government and private schools throughout 80 countries made a splash with Hydro Dynamics.

On 24 February, students came together in Abuja, Nigeria, to participate in this challenge at Baze University. Teams built, tested, and programmed an autonomous robot using LEGO MINDSTORM technology to solve a set of missions in preparation for the Robot Games. Throughout their experience and problem-solving processes, teams operated under the FIRST LEGO League signature set of core values, celebrating discovery, teamwork, and professionalism.

The Geniuses Team from the Odyssey Educational Foundation was one of ten schools that participated in this particular challenge. The team received an AIAA Foundation FIRST® LEGO® League Grant that was supported by The Boeing Company. They used the funds from the grant to purchase a robot for the competition.

The AIAA Foundation is proud to support programs such as this and congratulates all of the teams for their participation. Applications for the 2018 AIAA Foundation FIRST® LEGO® League Grant Program will be accepted 11 May–31 August 2018. For more information please visit aiaa.org/FIRSTGrants.

Member News Seven AIAA Members Included in Langley Research Center Hall of Honor Class of 2017

In 2017, the Langley Research Center NACA/NASA Hall of Honor honored its second class of inductees. The Hall of Honor was conceived to pay tribute to individuals who built exemplary careers at the NACA Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory/NASA Langley Research Center, and it formally recognizes those persons whose contributions have had the most sustained and far-reaching influence on the leadership, direction, mission, and capabilities of the center and/or whose work at Langley enabled unprecedented and fundamental advancements in either a scientific or engineering field and made significant contributions to the U.S. aerospace industry for commercial and military aircraft and/or spacecraft. The hall provides a focused opportunity for NASA Langley employees, retirees, and the aerospace community to reflect on the notable contributions of these who were instrumental in the sustained and exceptionally important successes of Langley.

The first induction took place in 2015 to mark the 100tth anniversary of the creation of NACA, and the second induction of 18 honorees took place in June 2017, as part of the NASA Langley Research Center Centennial celebration. Many of these honorees and their contributions are prominently reflected in two new books on this 100-year history: The Unknown and Impossible: How a Research Facility in Virginia Mastered the Air and Conquered Space (Tamara Dietrich, Mark St. John Erickson and Mike Holtzclaw, The Daily Press Media Group, Newport News, VA, 2017) and A Century at Langley: The Storied Legacy and Soaring Future of NASA Langley Research Center (Joseph R. Chambers, NASA Special Publication 2017-07-101-LaRC, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2017).

The seven AIAA members who were honored as part of the Hall of Honor’s Class of 2017 are:

· AIAA Member Norman L. Crabill

· AIAA Honorary Fellow Dr. Smith J. DeFrance

· AIAA Associate Fellow Cornelius Driver

· AIAA Fellow Roy V. Harris

· AIAA Associate Fellow Harvey H. Hubbard

· AIAA Associate Fellow Edward C. Polhamus

· AIAA Fellow Dr. James H. Starnes Jr.

More information about the Hall of Honor can be found at: www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/naca-and-nasa-langley-hall-of-honor-class-of-2017.

Section News National Capital Section Presents Future City Special Award

The Gratton School Future City Team. Credit: Future City

By Bruce Cranford

From 17 to 21 February, regional Future City winners from 44 middle schools nationwide, Canada, and China participated in the Future City National Finals in Washington, DC. Regional winning teams received an all-expense-paid trip to the National Finals.

Future City, in its 26th year, asks middle school students to create cities of the future, first on a computer and then in large tabletop models. This year’s Future City theme was “The Age-Friendly City.” Working in teams with a teacher and volunteer engineer mentor, students created their cities using the SimCity 3000 TM video game, donated to all participating schools by Electronic Arts, Inc. of Redwood City, CA. They wrote an abstract and an essay on using engineering to solve an important social issue, and then they presented and defended their cities before engineer judges at the competition. More than 40,000 students from more than 1,350 schools participated this school year.

The students created detailed—often fantastic—cities of tomorrow that give intriguing insight to how young minds envision their future. At the same time their bold designs and innovative concepts provide a refreshingly optimistic appreciation of how our nation can realistically deal with the many challenges facing its cities, including the power of public spaces.

As part of the Future City’s program, the AIAA National Capital Section (NCS) presented a Special Award for the Best Use of Aerospace Technology to team Kenko Toshi (Team Members: Caroline Thomsen, Suzi Stegmann, Ella Spaulding, Evan Johns, Michael Chambers, Alex Gorman, Paige Wilson, Rylee Ford, Audrey Gemperle, Caitlin Boots, Faith Heacock-Johnes, Educator: Rexann Casteel, Mentor: Brad Stegmann, School: Gratton School, Future City Region: Northern California). The section congratulates the team for their outstanding efforts.

David Brandt, AIAA NCS chair, presented the award on 20 February. The award consisted of a savings bond for each student team member, and a plaque highlighting the award for each member of the team.

The section also wishes to thank the NCS judges for this award: David Brandt and Kevin Zezlina, Lockheed Martin, and Bruce Cranford, NCS Social Media chair. For more information and a list of all the winners, visit www.futurecity.org.

Member News Homi J. Bhabha Gold Medal Given To Dr. Jain

Dr. Prakash Chand Jain (right) receives honor from Indian Union Minister of Science and Technology Dr. Harsh Vardhan (left). Credit: Indian Science Congress

AIAA Associate Fellow Dr. Prakash Chand Jain, a scientist with Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO) India, has been given the prestigious Homi J. Bhabha National Award by Indian Union Minister of Science and Technology Dr. Harsh Vardhan during the 105th Session of the Indian Science Congress. The award was given in recognition of Dr. Jain’s significant contributions toward the development of science and technology, specifically in the realm of aerospace engineering. Dr Jain, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, IIT Bombay, and the Pennsylvania State University, specialized in the areas of aerospace structures technologies. He is a Fellow of Telangana Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers India. In addition to various DRDO awards, Dr. Jain is the recipient of the coveted Dr. Biren Roy Space Science and Design Award from the Aeronautical Society of India.

STEM Activities The STEM of Planetary Exploration

Students in their subgroups design Mars rovers to ascend Olympus Mons. Credit: AIAA Sydney Section

By Andrew Neely

The STEM of Planetary Exploration coincided with the visit of Dr. Randii Wessen, mission architect from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; he was visiting the AIAA Sydney Section with the AIAA Distinguished Lecturer Program. Schools and Girl Guides and Scout groups from all over Canberra were invited to nominate a small number of students to attend intensive, hands-on, interactive sessions. Held at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra, 65 children from 14 different Canberra area schools and a number of Girl Guide and Scout troops attended, as well as a large number of teachers, leaders and parents also attended.

The format for the day was based on the AIAA Sydney Section’s successful Science with an Astronaut event from 2015. For this year, new activities were designed around the theme of a mission to Mars. The session began with a short presentation by Dr. Wessen about the design of planetary missions. The students were then split into small themed groups (Curiosity, Phobos, and ExoMars) to rotate through 3 hands-on activities each describing aspects of the mission: interplanetary travel, rover design, and rover teleoperation. For the interplanetary travel activity, students learned about the physics of trajectories and helped to design a Mars transfer trajectory using NASA’s GMAT software by selecting and testing thruster burn times. They also learned about the economics of space flight and the promise of reusability before each attempting to land a SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster on a drone ship using VR goggles.

In the second activity, they learned about the design considerations for planetary rovers and were tasked in groups with designing a rover to ascend Olympus Mons. In the final activity, they learned about the demands and limitations of teleoperation from orbit by remotely commanding, in task teams, an actual rover located 300 km away in the Mars Yard in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

These activities were run by a large team of academics and Ph.D. students from UNSW Canberra and the University of Sydney. For a number of the undergraduate and postgraduate students and young professionals it was one of their first experiences delivering STEM K–12 outreach.

Section News AIAA Greater Huntsville Section Volunteers at Galaxy of Lights

AIAA Greater Huntsville Section volunteers gather. The section thanks our volunteers: Naveen Vetcha, Brandon and Nicole Stiltner, Ken and Lisa Philippart, Tammy and Matt Statham, Richard and Karen Jozefiak, Thomas Barker, John Roy, Candice Dalton and her mom Melanie, Erin Gish, Brittani Searcy, her sister Bridget, her mom Jessica Huff and grandparents Bill and Joyce Huff, Eric Jackson, Tom Giel, Joe and Bobbey Huwaldt, Brenda Kimani, Carson Kennedy, Kurt Polzin and Mike Bangham. Credit: Naveen Vetcha and Lisa Philippart

By Naveen Vetcha and Ken Philippart

On 6 December, visitors to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens (HBG) annual Galaxy of Lights found the AIAA Greater Huntsville Section staffing the ticket booths and directing traffic as they volunteered for the evening. Galaxy of Lights is a Huntsville holiday light extravaganza featuring larger-than-life animated light displays, which attracts over 30,000 walking night visitors and 25,000 carloads of people on driving nights. The event is HBG’s largest fundraising event and is run almost exclusively by volunteers.

Section Chair Naveen Vetcha and the Council committed AIAA to helping on 6 December. Vetcha attended the training session as the event Day Captain and organized the section’s participation. A call for volunteers was sent out and 29 AIAA members and family members signed up to help.

On the evening of 6 December, the AIAA Greater Huntsville Section banner was proudly displayed at the entrance to the Galaxy of Lights to let visitors know who was volunteering that evening. The volunteers worked for several hours collecting passes, selling admissions, directing traffic, and the night’s proceeds, admitting 255 vehicles and collecting $1,400 to support HBG operations. AIAA Greater Huntsville’s participation in the Galaxy of Lights was a fun and festive way for AIAA to give back to the Huntsville community during the season of giving.

Obituary Senior Member Fote Died in August 2017

Philip F. J. Fote, 84, and a 55-year member of the AIAA New England Section, passed away on 19 August 2017.

Phil Fote earned a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in 1957, and an M.S. in Physics at Northeastern University in 1961. Mr. Fote was employed at Textron Systems (formerly AVCO Corp.) in Wilmington, MA, for over 60 years.

Mr. Fote had extensive experience in the concept formulation, design, fabrication, and testing of missile weapon and commercial systems of all types. He performed analyses and directed other specialists in system and subsystem design of both domestic and foreign missile systems. The weapon systems extended from strategic missiles such as Minuteman and Peacekeeper to theater ballistic missile interceptors. The commercial reentry systems ranged from the Apollo Program to the current Orion Multi-Purpose Commercial Crew Vehicle Program.

Mr. Fote was a long-time member of the intelligence community. He had frequently participated in developing estimates of the design and performance of foreign missile systems and was a specialist in telemetry data analysis and critical technology identification.

As Chief Engineer, and previously Director of the Systems Concepts and Preliminary Design Department and Manager of the Aerothermal/Flight Dynamics Departments, he was responsible for the initiation and detailed design of weapon systems and various reentry concepts. Specializing in reentry physics, Mr. Fote led the transition from simple ballistic reentry shapes to the advanced designs of maneuvering vehicles. He was involved in the development, fabrication and testing of the AVCO reentry heatshield that was used to protect astronauts returning from the moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

Mr. Fote was more recently honored with a NASA award for his work on the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle’s heat shield, which flew on Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) in December 2014, successfully demonstrating the initial step toward protecting astronauts on future space missions providing safe reentry from beyond the moon and back.

Obituary AIAA Associate Fellow Oglevie Died in February

Ronald E. Oglevie died on 19 February at age 85.

Mr. Oglevie attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. He later earned his M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southern California.

During his career, Oglevie was a technical specialist in guidance, navigation, and control of space systems. He was involved in the Apollo, Space Station, Space Shuttle, and numerous satellite projects. After 34 years with Rockwell, he started his own business where he focused on Small Business Innovation Research contracts and consulting.

Obituary AIAA Fellow Schmit Died in March

Lucien A. Schmit, Jr., died on 16 March at age 89.

Mr. Schmit was widely recognized as the father of modern structural optimization (also known as structural synthesis). In 1960 he published a landmark paper introducing the idea of combining finite element structural analysis with nonlinear programming techniques. This basic idea led to the creation of a powerful new class of structural design optimization methods that have found use in major commercial computer programs used extensively in engineering practice. Many of the key ideas that advanced the state of the art in structural synthesis later provided useful guidelines for the development of multidisciplinary design optimization methods.

Before entering the academic world, Mr. Schmit was a structures engineer at the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Company (1951–1953) and later a research engineer at the MIT Aeroelastic and Structures Research Laboratory (1953–1958). In 1958 he joined the faculty of Case Institute of Technology as an assistant professor. He was advanced to associate professor in 1961, to professor in 1964, and in 1969 he was appointed Wilbert J. Austin Distinguished Professor of Engineering. Mr. Schmit was head of the Division of Solid Mechanics, Structures and Mechanical Design from 1966 to 1970.

In 1970, he was appointed professor of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1970 to 1993, he continued to teach and do research at the university, focusing special attention on creating efficient methods for large-scale, system-level, structural optimization. From 1976 to 1979 he was chair of the Mechanics and Structures Department.

An AIAA Fellow, Mr. Schmit was recognized with several awards including the AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Award (1979), the AIAA Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Award (1994), and the Walter J. and Angeline H. Crichlow Trust Prize (1999) for pioneering seminal contributions to the initiation of structural optimization and multidisciplinary design and their evolution from abstract concepts to widely used practical tools.