Engineers who work in the aerospace industry are primarily involved in the design and development of aircraft or spacecraft. The two main branches are aeronautical engineering (concerned with the development of flight-capable vehicles within the atmosphere) and astronautical engineering (concerning the development of spacecraft for travel beyond Earth’s atmosphere).

Aerospace engineers design vehicles to operate in demanding environments subjected to high loads, using knowledge of advanced materials, aerodynamics, stress analysis, and heat transfer. They are involved in the structural design of the vehicles, modes of propulsion, and control systems for manned and unmanned flight.

Recommended Technical Elective Offerings

• ME 472: Fatigue and Fracture of Metals
• ME 474: Mechanics of Composite Materials
• ME 477: ME Finite Element Analysis
• ME 478: Advanced Flow Diagnostics
• ME 483: Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics
• ME 484: Gas Turbines
• ME 488: Introduction to Aerodynamics
• IME 440: Engineering Economy
• IME 460: Evaluation of Engineering Data