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Christopher W

- Research Program Mentor

MS Master of Science candidate

Expertise

Aerospace engineering, finite element methods, Aerospace, Computational Simulations, Public Speaking

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Mission to Mars

The year is 2028, and just next year the very first team of astronauts is boldly going into the unknown - the first manned mission to the surface of Mars. But how are they going to get there? How long will it take? When should they leave? You'll have to figure all of this out! In this project you will develop a basic model for how a vehicle can get from Earth to Mars (and hopefully back!), figuring out some orbital mechanics, physics, and rocket science along the way. What you focus on is up to you, as this project has many avenues to explore, lending itself rather nicely to a number of optimization problems (e.g. minimum flight duration or minimum fuel burn to name two).

Coding skills

Python, MATLAB, Julia, C++, R (ggplot2)

Interested in working with expert mentors like Christopher?

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