Space engineering involves creating, operating, evaluating, and optimizing advanced spacecraft systems and applications for on-board sensing, processing, storage, and communications as well as maximizing spacecraft reliability, performance, adaptability, and AI integration while minimizing power, size, weight, and cost.
Capturing the Imagination
Few topics continue to capture the imagination of our society more than space. Over the past several decades, innovations and technologies in space engineering have dramatically impacted our nation, and the world, in terms of communication, navigation, weather, entertainment, defense, and much more. Today, space engineering is even more active and exciting than the space race of the 1960s, where a large and growing community of agencies, companies large and small, and universities is contributing with new space craft, missions, and technologies. Researchers and educators in space engineering at Pitt have a long and rich history in the design, development, evaluation, and deployment of space technologies, across a broad range of topics, as captured in the list below.
- Space Engineering Topics
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- Space Artificial Intelligence
- Space Communications
- Space Computer Vision
- Space Cybersecurity
- Space Education (Workforce Development)
- Space Electronics
- Space Guidance and Control
- Space Manufacturing
- Space Materials
- Space Memory and Storage
- Space Networks
- Space Power Systems
- Space Processors
- Space Propulsion
- Space Radiation Effects
- Space Robotics
- Space Sensors
- Space Structures
- Space Thermal Management
- Space Turbulence
One ongoing space mission led by Pitt researchers in Space Engineering is CASPR, which has been operating in low-Earth orbit since 2021 on the International Space Station and controlled by a ground station on campus.
For questions or more information, please contact our Director of Space Engineering, Dr. Alan George.
