Professor Steven Collicott and students from his Zero-Gravity Flight Experiment class have been helping students from West Lafayette's Cumberland Elementary School discover if fireflies light up in space. The Zero-Gravity Glow Experiment is scheduled on the first Blue Origin rocket flight of 2017.

AAE Professor Dan Dumbacher says the transfer of propellant, the budget and the effects of long stays in space are still challenges facing SpaceX’s proposal to colonize Mars. Prof. Dumbacher speaks with Aviation Week’s Frank Morring in this podcast.

David Spencer (BSAAE'89, MSAAE'91) joined AAE as an Associate Professor in Fall 2016 after six years as a Professor of Practice at Georgia Tech. Prior to that, Spencer spent 17 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

AAE Professor Steven Collicott has been appointed to the Committee on Biological and Physical Sciences in Space (CBPSS). The group is a standing committee of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

AAE alumna Ashley (Ruic) Faires is the winner of the 2016 Purdue Engineering Alumni Association (EAA) Young Engineering Alumnus Award. Ashley graduated with a BSAAE in 2006, and is presently a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy.

Charles C. Bock, Jr. (BSAE '49) joins aviation pioneers such as join Wilbur and Orville Wright, plane builder Glenn L. Martin, and astronauts Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7) and Peggy Whitson (International Space Station) in the Iowa Aviation Hall of Fame.

Purdue AAE alumnus Alexander Finch (MSAAE ’11) recently returned from 15 months in the Antarctic. He was part of a team of researchers who live and work at the Halley Research Station, which is run by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Jeffrey Stuart has three degrees from Purdue AAE. He is currently working as a Researcher/Technologist in the Mission Design and Navigation Section at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

AAE junior Ashish Patel is spending his summer on co-op with Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation in Savannah, GA.

AAE senior Ishaan Bakhle is spending his summer as an intern with NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA.