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Featured Video

2025 Ascendants

Created in partnership with renowned astrodynamicist Moriba Jah, co-founder/chief scientist at Privateer and Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas, ASCENDANTS is the exclusive ASCEND community of thought leaders and activists whose intellectual and emotional commitment to keeping the off-world environment sustainable knows no bounds.

Latest

Webinar

A Philosophy of Turbulence Modeling

August 19, 2025

Based on our experience and passion for the subject, we attempt a lucid description of the activity called Turbulence Modeling, its motivation, its rules, its unwritten principles, its sources of information, and sadly its many fallacies. Modeling is an essential enabler for CFD, and most of the time the model constitutes a gift to the community by the individuals and their institutions, whether government, industry, or university. Prestige is a motivation, but progress is its own reward. We contrast Intuitive and Constructed models. Rules begin with dimensional analysis, but include proper behavior at the edge of a turbulent region. Debatable guiding principles include the requirement for the Partial Differential Equations to be local, and the relationship with the exact Reynolds-Stress transport equations. Information comes from experiments and Direct Numerical Simulations, in both simple and complex flows. All the classical models are shown to suffer a "Structural Limitation" expressed by a General Law of the Wall which is physically incorrect. Fallacies include the idea that the Boussinesq approximation returns an isotropic stress tensor, the importance of realizability, the distinction between normal and off-diagonal Reynolds stresses, and of course the idea that one-equation models don't work.

Latest Video

SPHEREx: NASA’s All-Sky Spectroscopic Mapping Machine

September 24, 2025

The 2025 ASCEND audience heard from SPHEREx’s Co-Principal Investigators, Jennifer Rocca from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Phil Korngut from Caltech. Together they delivered the 2025 William H. Pickering Lecture, telling the story of the SPHEREx mission, detailing the progression through design, implementation, launch, and finally its operation phase. SPHEREx’s cartography is now underway in full force.

Podcast

Space Policy Pod: Episode 4 (JP Parker, Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

June 17, 2024

Given the current real-world challenges confronting all of us, AIAA has joined the MITRE Corporation, Space Foundation, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to produce this podcast series to examine events and ideas affecting the space sector. We hope the episodes serve as an enlightening discussion on the relevant topics of the day with insights from key policymakers in the field.

Videos

AEROSPACE VIDEOS

2025 Ascendants

September 22, 2025

Created in partnership with renowned astrodynamicist Moriba Jah, co-founder/chief scientist at Privateer and Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas,…

AEROSPACE VIDEOS

NASA's Walt Silva Talks X-59

July 25, 2025

NASA’s Lead for Structures for the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator – or X-59 – Walt Silva, described the aircraft’s high-speed journey from finite element models…

Webinars

Variational quantum algorithms for computational fluid dynamics - Professor Dieter Jaksch (May 2025)

Variational quantum algorithms are particularly promising early applications of quantum computers since they are comparatively noise tolerant and aim to achieve a quantum advantage with only a few hundred qubits. They are applicable to a wide range of optimization problems arising throughout the natural sciences and industry. To demonstrate the possibilities for the aeroscience community, we describe how variational quantum algorithms can be utilized in computational fluid dynamics.

Line of Sight Stabilization for Directed Energy Systems - Bryan Kelchner, Steven Griffin and Victor Beazel (Jan 2025)

Bryan Kelchner, VP of Engineering at Teknicare, Inc., a company that specializes in directed-energy (DE) systems engineering, design, development, integration, and testing of beam control and laser systems for DoD; Victor Beazel, Senior Dynamics and Controls Engineer at Teknicare; and Steven Griffin, Boeing Senior Technical Fellow will talk about challenges of airborne and space-based high-energy laser systems’ line-of-sight control.

Characterization and Control of Unsteady Separation on Swept Wings - Dr. Daniel Garmann (Nov 2024)

Large transient excursions in angle of attack promote unsteady separation and dynamic stall over a wing, allowing it to briefly exceed static-stall conditions but also inducing potentially undesirable variations in aerodynamic loading or structural response. This phenomenon is prevalent in a number of engineering applications, including helicopter rotors, maneuvering aircraft, wind turbines, and wing–gust/wing-wake encounters. Thus, its prediction and control are of great interest. Our group at AFRL has performed a large computational campaign over recent years coving a broad range of flow conditions, planforms, and kinematics to uncover the viscous mechanisms preceding stall onset. In these studies, we have documented the dominant role of a small-scale laminar separation bubble (LSB) on the initiation of dynamic stall, which guided the development of a novel low amplitude, high-frequency control strategy to exploit the LSB dynamics for transient stall suppression. Although originally designed for nominally 2D wing sections, the control technique was successfully extended to finite wings because by exploiting the mostly spanwise-uniform LSB prior to stall. Swept wings exhibit a similar LSB stall precursor state, yet their eventual stall behavior (transient tip stall) is drastically different than the dynamic center-wing stall of its straight wing counterpart. Despite this, the targeted, high-frequency control is also remarkably successful at also suppressing tip stall, demonstrating the dominant and somewhat universal nature of the LSB across relevant configurations and its potential for manipulation. The presentation will provide an overview of the swept-wing separation control, while also highlighting a promising passive control strategy through micro-cavity actuation.

Detonation ! - Professor Elaine Oran (May 2025)

A detonation is an explosion driven by energy released behind a leading shock wave traveling through a background of energetic material. It is the strongest form of combustion wave, travels orders of magnitude faster than a flame, and once it is started, it is difficult to impossible to contain until all of the fuel is consumed.

Podcasts

Aerospace Insider Podcast: Episode 1 (Working at NRO)

January 7, 2021

Members of NRO’s workforce cadre give us a rare behind-the-scenes account of what it’s like to work at the secretive agency that acquires and operates U.S. imaging and signals intelligence satellites. Hear about their motivations, career paths and why they wouldn’t choose to work anywhere else.

Aerospace Insider Podcast: Episode 2 (Creating Ingenuity)

February 17, 2021

AIAA’s Aerospace America gives voice to experts in the aviation and space fields who will define the future of air travel, space exploration, national security and much more. Hear first-hand accounts from special guests and learn how tomorrow begins today.

Aerospace Insider Podcast: Episode 3 (Biomedical Research)

April 20, 2021

The International Space Station won’t last forever. Over time, the modules will become more expensive to maintain, and the political will to do so is likely to falter, despite the promising research that happens up there, including aboard the ISS National Lab. Aerospace Insider spoke to microbiologist Michael Roberts about why this unique, space-borne national laboratory has proven to be such a draw, particularly for pharmaceutical and other researchers, and what should become of this research in the post-ISS era.