Aeronautics and Astronautics

The Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics prepares students for professional positions in industry, government, and academia by offering a comprehensive program of undergraduate and graduate teaching and research. In this broad program, students have the opportunity to learn and integrate multiple engineering disciplines. The department’s teaching emphasizes structural, aerodynamic, guidance and control, and propulsion problems of aircraft and spacecraft. 

Academic Programs and Pathways

We offer a rigorous, multidisciplinary curriculum designed to build a deep foundational understanding of engineering and physical sciences. Our academic programs lead to several degree pathways:

• Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

• Master of Science (M.S.)

• Engineer Degree

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

For students pursuing degrees in other departments, we also offer undergraduate and doctoral minors in Aeronautics and Astronautics. All degree programs combine core aeronautics and astronautics topics with essential coursework in mathematics and related engineering and scientific fields.

Collaborative Research and Innovation

Stanford's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics is at the forefront of aerospace innovation. Our faculty, researchers, and students collaborate on advanced, multi-disciplinary research areas that push the boundaries of modern flight and space exploration. Key areas of research and teaching include:

• Autonomous Systems and Controls: Autonomy, decision-making under uncertainty, and optimal control, estimation, and system identification. Our fundamental and applied research on autonomous systems and controls aims to enable greater autonomy for explorations of land, sea, sky and space.

• Multidisciplinary Computational Aerosciences: Applied aerodynamics, computational fluid dynamics, hypersonic and supersonic flow, aeroelasticity, and computational mechanics. This field ranges from physics- and data-driven modeling, to novel computational algorithms that maintain a strong partnership with the ongoing advances in computer science and computer hardware.

• Distributed Space Systems: Spacecraft design, satellite engineering, astrodynamics, mission planning, navigation systems (especially GPS), space debris, and space policy and economics. The collective goal of this research is to perform fundamental and applied research to enable Distributed Space Systems (DSS).

• Propulsion & Energy Conversion Systems: Hybrid propulsion, conventional and composite structures, turbulent flow and combustion, and micro and nano systems. This research combines theory, computation, and experiment to improve performance, efficiency, and environmental impact for both atmospheric and space applications.