Program Educational Objectives (PEOs)

• Graduates will make direct contributions to the area of astronautical engineering as practicing engineers.
  
  
• Graduates will successfully evaluate, monitor, and administer astronautical research and development projects.
  
  
• Graduates will use their AFIT education to approach and solve new technological challenges to meet the needs of the Department of Defense.

Student Outcomes (SOs)

Graduates of the GA program will:

• Apply sound engineering principles to solve Air Force and Department of Defense problems.
  
  
• Communicate technical information, via oral presentations and written documents, to a wide range of audiences, including engineering professionals and senior military officers.
  
  
• Understand the principles of orbital mechanics. Graduates will be able to describe Keplerian motion, major perturbations to Keplerian motion, and be able to plan orbital maneuvers.
  
  
• Be prepared to describe and discuss significant aspects of the space environment and their effect on Earth-orbiting spacecraft.
  
  
• Model spacecraft attitude dynamics and synthesize control laws to control spacecraft attitude. Graduates will understand transformations due to coordinate frame translation and rotations.
  
  
• Have a basic understanding of modern communication principles as they relate to satellite communications. Graduates will recognize methods of modulation, multiplexing, and encoding. Graduates will be able to perform simple link margin analyses needed to establish initial design requirements.
  
  
• Be prepared to describe essential features of rocket propulsion including: performance parameters, propellant types, rocket staging, and fluid mechanics as it pertains to rocket propulsion.
  
  
• Conduct basic analyses of space structures including deformation from tension, torsion, shear, and bending.
  
  
• Have basic understanding of the remote sensing process, and be able to recognize key concepts relating to optical systems, imaging, spatial and spectral resolution, and atmospheric absorption and scattering. 

Maj Robert A. Bettinger