At any given time, fewer than 140 undergraduate and graduate students are participating in KU’s aerospace studies, which is one of the top programs in the country, said Mark Ewing, associate professor and chair of aerospace engineering.

“We’re one of the top two or three programs in the United States on what we call vehicle configuration,” Ewing said. “We focus not just on the aerodynamics and propulsion, but aircraft configuration. We don’t just study the individual elements, but we tie it all together.”

Recent changes in the program are benefiting KU aerospace engineering graduates, Ewing said.

“The big thing happening now is what we call ‘flight activity initiative,'” Ewing said. “Really what it boils down to is that we’re refocusing a lot of our resources on flying. We want our students, especially graduate students, to have the experience in flight testing.”

Undergraduates, he said, focus more on design.

“They’ll concentrate on flight vehicles,” he said. “They’ll design aircraft that would be built and flown and get feedback.”

Hands-on learning

The reason for the change in the program is the hands-on learning that students will receive, Ewing said.

“We have a whole bunch of resources out at the airport we need to tap into,” he said.

Some students spend time at Lawrence Municipal Airport, working in the hangar and on the department’s two airplanes.

“We’ve remodeled one of the sections of the aircraft to be a test bed for what they call multispectral imaging,” Ewing said. “Basically we’re experimenting with using aircraft to fly over forests and take pictures. Based on different colors, biologists can determine what the state of the forest is.”

Students do a lot of building, he said. Seniors design at least two spacecraft or aircraft before graduating with a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering.

Ewing said the department  which has eight full-time faculty members  is very demanding. About half the students finish the program in four years, and Ewing said he encourages students to plan on graduating in five years.

Cutting-edge research

Much of the curriculum in the aerospace department is based on cutting-edge research, Ewing said.

Trevor Sorensen, associate professor of aerospace engineering, is working on using KUDOSat (Kansas University Dosimetry Satellite) to re-map the Van Allen belt that circles Earth.

“The Earth produces an electromagnetic field that keeps out radiation but also traps in radiation,” Ewing said. “What KUDOSat aims to do is find out how dangerous it really is up in the belt.”

Sorensen and 10 students in his Space Systems Design class put together a proposal of more than 200 pages detailing the plan last spring.

Sorensen said he saw a need for re-mapping the Van Allen belt last year. The current radiation models, he said, are inaccurate because they were made from measurements taken in the 1960s, when there was also nuclear testing. Because of the high readings that resulted from those tests, the government is spending money on shields to protect its satellites.

The satellite also will be able to test components of other satellites to see how they would survive in the Van Allen Belt.

Sorensen essentially served as the team leader and his students spent the semester working on the details. Sorensen is seeking funding from the government. The project will cost about $50 million over the next 14 years.

“Once we get the meeting at the Pentagon, we’re expecting to get support from the Department of Defense and (the) Air Force,” Sorensen said.

He said he would be ready to launch the first of six satellites about two years after receiving the funding.

Students essential

Scott Kowalchuk, Prairie Village graduate student, worked on the project last spring during his final undergraduate semester and also this summer. He said he will continue working on the project during his graduate course work.

“It’s a fairly good-size satellite and to do that in one semester and do everything Sorensen required was a lot of work,” Kowalchuk said. “But it reinforced the materials learned, so it was a valuable asset. It was a lot of fun, a lot of challenges and a lot of hard work.”

Students, Sorensen said, were essential to this type of research.

“I think that the effort of the students was successful,” he said. “They furthered the design and answered a lot of questions.”

Major research, Sorensen said, gives students a glimpse of careers in aerospace engineering.

“It’s a lot of work for the students,” Sorensen said. “Toward the end of the semester, they don’t get a lot of sleep. It gives them practice for what it’s like in the industry.”