Pair of students receive Abe M. Zarem Graduate Award for Distinguished Achievement
Aaron Afriat and Sandeep Baskar received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Abe M. Zarem Graduate Award for Distinguished Achievement.
Afriat, an AAE alumnus who currently is a master’s student in mechanical engineering, and Baskar, who received his bachelor's from AAE in May 2020, won the astronautics award for their paper “Atmospheric Breathing Ramjet for Martian Descent Missions.”
One of the challenges of manned and unmanned Mars missions resides in the planet’s low-density atmosphere, which prevents conventional Entry, Descent, Landing (EDL) concepts to land larger, human-class payloads. For Professor Stephen Heister’s AAE 590 class, Afriat and Baskar attempted to solve the problem by designing a ramjet demo cruise vehicle that uses a solid-fuel ramjet cycle with CO2 as the oxidizing in-situ agent. The team found that not only can Martian ramjets potentially solve some of the pressing EDL issues facing the space exploration community, but they also provide additional mission flexibility for future astronauts and unmanned vehicles.
AIAA Honorary Fellow Dr. Abe Zarem, founder and managing director of Frontier Associates, established the Abe M. Zarem Award for Distinguished Achievement to annually recognize graduate students in aeronautics and astronautics who have demonstrated outstanding scholarship in their field and who are pursuing graduate degrees.
“Organizations like AIAA, through recognitions and worldwide spread of technical information, enabled me and others alike to strive for our dream, something I am incredibly thankful for,” said Afriat, whose ME advisor is Professor Steven Son. “I believe that this wealth of information, while bringing us closer together as a scientific community, also brings humanity ever closer to spreading beyond Earth’s horizon.”
The paper had taken third place in the Region III master’s category at the AIAA 2020 Regional Student Conference and was automatically entered into consideration for the Zarem Award. Typically, the Zarem Award is not shared, but Afriat and Baskar were told the committee felt strongly the pair’s paper should receive the award.
Afriat and Baskar will be plugged into the virtual International Astronautical Congress and also have been invited to attend the 2021 AIAA SciTech Forum in Nashville in January.
A graduate research assistant at the Purdue Energetics Research Center, Afriat’s research focuses on additively manufacturing and characterizing high-performance, environmentally friendly propellants. His interests lie in designing the next generation of spacecraft engines.
After receiving bachelor’s degrees from AAE and in Applied Physics in May, Baskar currently is working at Dynetics as a flight dynamics analyst focusing on trajectory optimization and mission design for the Artemis Human Lander System project.