It’s with pleasure that the AIAA Houston scholarship committee announces the selection of Haripriya Sundararaju as the recipient of this year’s Spirit of Apollo scholarship. Ms. Sundararaju is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston. She was selected out of a group of five students that applied this year. The student has been notified and invited to attend our awards dinner on June 26th.
Rafael E. Munoz
Scholarship Chair
Mark your calendars for the AIAA Houston Section Awards Dinner Meeting on the evening of Thursday, June 26, 2014. More details, as it becomes available, will appear on the event page.
We look forward to celebrating our members’ and the section’s achievements with you next month.
AIAA Houston Section membership,
We are pleased to announce the following nominees have been selected by majority vote to the AIAA Houston Section Executive Council positions for the 2014-2015 cycle. Their tenure, with the exception of the councilor position, will be from July 1st 2014 to June 30th 2015:
Chair-Elect: Eryn Beisner
Vice Chair (VC) Technical: Clay Stangle
Vice Chair (VC) Operations: Alan Sisson
Secretary: Zach Tejral
Treasurer: Jennifer Wells
Councilor: Sarah Shull
Please join in congratulating the nominees!
Thank you,
Robert Plunkett
Councilor, AIAA Houston Section
councilor7-2013@aiaahouston.
The March/April 2014 issue of Horizons is now online (36 pages in an 5.2 MB PDF file). Horizons is the newsletter of the Houston Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The cover story is “Climate Change Science & Public Policy,” by Douglas Yazell, Horizons Editor and editorial board member of AIAA’s Aerospace America magazine. This issue also contains, written testimony to Congress about Orion and a Mars 2021 Flyby by AIAA Executive Director Dr. Sandra Magnus, “Detecting Starships,” by Dr. Albert A. Jackson IV, part 6 of 7 of “Building an Astronomer’s Chair,” by Jim Wessel, JSC Astronomical Society Educational Outreach Chair, and much more.
Join us Thursday, May 8, 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm at the NASA Gilruth Center, Alamo Ballroom.
AIAA Houston welcomes Commander Chris Cassidy to kickoff our Annual Technical Symposium with his presentation, “Go for EVA – words that all astronauts want to hear!” Before becoming an Astronaut, Commander Chris Cassidy served 10 years as a Navy Seal. He made four six-month deployments: two to Afghanistan, and two to the Mediterranean. He deployed to the Afghanistan region two weeks after 9/11/01, served as Ground Assault Force Commander for international and U.S.-only combat missions in Afghanistan, and led two months of noncompliant ship-boardings in the Northern Arabian Gulf. In 2004 Commander Cassidy was selected as an astronaut by NASA. Before completing his first flight, he served as Capsule Communicator(CAPCOM) in Mission Control. Commander Cassidy flew on STS 127 which helped complete the construction of the Japanese Kibo module on the International Space Station. Most recently, Cassidy served as a flight engineer on Expedition 35/36, living and working on the station for more than five months. During his NASA career, Cassidy has completed six spacewalks, totaling 31 hours, 14 minutes and has accumulated 182 days in space.