The 46th Annual AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit was held July 25-28th in Nashville, TN, where Purdue stood out in receiving numerous Best Paper Awards.

Watch Live: Our Nation's Future in Space
Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., NASA's 12^th administrator, flew four Space Shuttle missions, two as commander, from 1986 to 1994, including deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first joint U.S.-Russian Space Shuttle mission.

Chris Yamamoto and Michael Bruno, 2 AAE undergraduate students, formed Team Speed Train and designed a flying train based on the Boilermaker Special to enter in the competition and finished 6th out of 35 teams on July 11th in Miami.

Purdue's eighth president, Arthur G. Hansen, who led the university from 1971-1982, died Monday (July 5) following complications from surgery at Health Park Medical Center in Fort Myers, Fla. He was 85.

Lieutenant Karl E. Garman is a Coast Guard Reservist, currently on active duty recall for the Deepwater Horizon response in the Gulf of Mexico region. He earned his M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 2003 here at Purdue.

Michael Bruno and Chris Yamamoto, both AAE undergraduate students, will compete in the Red Bull Flugtag USA on July 10th in Miami. German for "Flying Day," the Red Bull Flugtag challenges participants to build and pilot a homemade flying machine off of a 30-foot high flight deck.

Young dreamers still arrive at Purdue University's "cradle of astronauts" with hopes of following in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong, Gus Grissom, and David Wolf. But those dreams could be dashed, or delayed, by the government's decision to permanently retire the shuttle program and leave the future of American space travel in limbo for what some fear could be years.