Upcoming section events.
Utah: The CAPSTONE Mission and the Future of Spacecraft Navigation & Autonomy
Spacecraft orbits seemingly trace out beautiful conic shapes in space, but designing these trajectories is only half of the story: knowing where and when a spacecraft is, and how fast it’s moving, is the art and science of spacecraft navigation. Dr. Matthew Givens, a senior space navigation engineer at Advanced Space LLC, will share historical and technical insights from this field as well as some perilous stories from the journey of his company’s flagship space mission, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), which launched in 2022 and has been orbiting in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) near the moon ever since. CAPSTONE has been a testbed for several autonomous navigation and communication technologies and, in partnership with NASA, has pioneered operations and stationkeeping strategies in NRHO for the future Lunar Gateway space station.
How do we navigate spacecraft? What challenges are there for future human colonization of the moon? What technologies are being developed to address these challenges? These and other questions will be the subject of this presentation for the AIAA Utah Section.
About the Speaker: Dr. Matthew Givens
Matthew Givens graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah in 2017. He then completed advanced degrees in aerospace engineering from Utah State University (M.S. 2019) and University of Colorado Boulder (Ph.D. 2023) before joining the navigation staff at Advanced Space. His expertise is in satellite orbit determination, cislunar astrodynamics, and computer vision. He also recently taught a new graduate course at the UME EN 6560 - Introduction to Astrodynamics, in the spring of 2025.
AIAA Utah Section
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the largest professional society for aeronautical and astronautical engineering professionals in the world. The Utah Section seeks to connect, engage, and recognize the best and brightest aerospace engineers across the Beehive State. Other collaborative partners for this talk include the Utah sections of ASME, IEEE, INCOSE, and
the Alumni Society of the University of Utah Department of Mechanical Engineering.
San Diego: Lost in Space: How to Navigate around the Moon and Beyond?
This seminar will cover on-going research efforts on autonomous optical navigation for deep-space missions. Applications of interest include trajectories beyond Geostationary Earth Orbit, lunar transfers, lunar orbits, and missions to asteroids or comets. We explore the potential of techniques such as edge detection, centroiding, neural network-based feature detection (for lunar crater and Earth coastline detection), pattern recognition, etc. An overview of our simulation framework is provided, including image generation, image processing, characterization and modeling of measurement errors, filtering, uncertainty quantification, and validation through hardware-in-the-loop experiments. Autonomous optical navigation can enable lower cost, more flexible, independent, resilient, and sustainable space exploration, and its promise, technical challenges, expected performance, and limitations are discussed in this talk.
Bio:
Pablo Machuca is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at San Diego State University. Pablo completed his Ph.D. on “Mission Design for Asteroid Exploration Using Autonomous CubeSats” at Cranfield University (United Kingdom) in 2021. He then joined University of California San Diego as a postdoctoral researcher on “Cislunar Space Domain Awareness” in 2021, and completed a second postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on “Space Debris Modeling and Propagation” in 2022. Pablo’s research interests include astrodynamics in dynamically complex environments and autonomous guidance, navigation and control, with applications to deep-space exploration, and small-spacecraft mission analysis and systems design.
Utah: DPS Tour
On behalf of ASME (as this technology focus is closest to ASME), Utah Section will be planning of a tour of DPS Skis in Salt Lake on Thursday February 16th at 6 PM. They will be inviting IEEE, AIAA, INCOSE and UoU ME Alumni group as we have been.
650 S 500 W, Salt Lake City. ASME/Utah to provide food.
PoC is Mr. Stu Gleason at DPS
San Diego: San Diego Engineers Week Awards Banquet
You are invited to kick-off Engineers Week with the 75th annual San Diego Engineers Week Awards Banquet on Friday, February 20, 2026. The Awards Banquet is hosted by the San Diego County Engineering Council in collaboration with local Engineering Society Chapters and Engineering Colleges. Join us to network and celebrate the contributions of those local people and organizations who are advancing engineering and technology in the community.
We are excited to return to the Crowne Plaza San Diego Hotel in Mission Valley with newly renovated ball rooms and ample space for sponsor and society display tables, the pre-event student network training, banquet hall, dinner and the ever popular no-host cash bar.
San Diego Engineers Week Awards Banquet
San Fernando Pacific - Origin and Development of the Quiet Supersonic Technology X-plane
On October 28, 2025, the X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) X-plane took off from Palmdale, CA and safely landed at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. This event was an important milestone towards addressing one of the most significant obstacles that has prevented commercial supersonic aircraft from becoming widespread: the sonic boom associated with supersonic flight. X-59 is a clean sheet, piloted supersonic X-plane that Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has designed and built to support NASA’s QueSST mission. It is designed to create a quiet supersonic “thump” rather than a deafening “boom”.
Cost: Free
RSVP to attend in person
This talk will provide a brief overview of the history of low boom shaping technology. It will cover how modern Computational Fluid Dynamics, computing capabilities, and traditional wind tunnel testing allow us to shape supersonic aircraft to reduce the loudness of sonic booms by more than 30 dB compared to legacy supersonic platforms. The talk will include an overview of the X-59 aircraft design along with a development status and a discussion of how NASA plans to support future efforts to revise current FAA restrictions that prohibit supersonic flight overland.
Dr. Michael Buonanno is the Air Vehicle lead for the X-59 at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale. In this role he coordinates the technical development of the X-plane design. Prior to this role, he served as Program Manager for the activities that immediately preceded QueSST: The Low Boom Flight Demonstrator Concept Formulation and Refinement studies as well as the N+2 Supersonic Validations program. Dr. Buonanno is a Lockheed Martin Fellow and has 20 years of industry experience as a conceptual design engineer at Skunk Works. In that time, he has led or supported a diverse array of aircraft development programs including small UAVs and solar-powered aircraft. He received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and earned his Master of Science and Doctorate degrees in Aerospace
Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Tucson - Holiday Party and Section Awards
You are invited to join the AIAA Tucson Section and the University of Arizona Student Branch for our annual Holiday Party at TopGolf! This event is a great opportunity to enjoy an evening of food, fun, and casual networking with fellow students, professionals, faculty, and industry partners from across the Tucson aerospace community.
We will also be presenting the 2025 AIAA Tucson Section Awards, recognizing individuals who have made an impact in engineering, STEM outreach, leadership, and service throughout the year.
Location: TopGolf Tucson, 4050 W Costco Dr, Tucson, AZ
Date: December 5, 2025
Time: 6:00 PM
We hope you’ll join us to celebrate the end of the year and connect with the wider AIAA community in a relaxed and enjoyable setting.
If you have any questions or require additional information, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Respectfully,
Quintina Hardesty Becker
Communications, Tucson Section of AIAA
San Diego - Oscar Alvarez-Salazar of JPL
Speaker Event: Oscar Alvarez-Salazar
Date: Friday, December 5th
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: GMCS 314
Section Manager for Guidance and Control of Autonomous Systems at JPL.
San Diego - Tall Towers on the Lunar Surface
Speaker Event: Dr. Anfrew Bergan - Tall Towers on the Lunar Surface
Date: Wednesday, December 3rd
Time: 6:30 PM – 7:45 PM
Location: E427
San Diego - Intro to Measurement Science and Data Acquisition for Engineers
Joe Spinozzi - Intro to Measurement Science and Data Acquisition for Engineers
Date: Wednesday, December 3rd
Time: 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
Location: HT022
Free pizza and drinks!
Tucson - The Future of Composite Structures
The AIAA Tucson Section and University of Arizona AIAA Student Branch are pleased to announce a special guest lecture featuring Dr. Mary Roybal. Dr. Roybal is a distinguished aerospace engineering leader with more than forty years of experience advancing materials, structures, and technology development across the defense and aerospace industries. A retired Sr. Principal Engineering Fellow from Raytheon, Dr. Roybal is widely recognized for her contributions in the field of Mechanical Engineering and her long-standing commitment to engineering excellence.
She is an AIAA Fellow, a dedicated member of the organization for four decades, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors in the engineering profession. Dr. Roybal earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA, and her academic journey also includes coursework and research at MIT, Caltech, Georgia Tech, and the University of Missouri–Rolla, reflecting a career marked by continuous learning and innovation.
Event Details
Location: Manuel Pacheco Integrated Learning Center (ILC), Room 141
(Underground building directly in front of the Main Library – 1500 E University Blvd.)
Date: Monday, December 1, 2025
Time: 7:00 PM
Presentation Title:
“A Perspective of the Future of Composite Structures in the Aerospace Industry”
Dr. Roybal will provide an expert-level perspective on advancements, challenges, and long-term trends in aerospace composite materials, drawing on her decades of experience in engineering, research, and leadership in the aerospace and defense sectors.
We hope you will join us for this insightful and inspiring discussion.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
Respectfully,
Quintina Hardesty Becker
Communications, Tucson Section of AIAA
San Diego - Flutter Assessment in Commercial Aircraft
AIAA San Diego invites you to attend our upcoming tech talk by Alex Scalabrin from Boeing. This fascinating talk will explain the fundamentals of flutter, its various forms across aerospace vehicles, and key design principles for preventing it, before moving on to practical aspects of flutter assessment in commercial aircraft design, including how aeroelastic models of stiffness, mass, and unsteady aerodynamics are developed and used in analyses.Topic: Flutter Assessment in Commercial AircraftSpeaker: Alex ScalabrinDate: Thursday, November 20th, 2025Time: 7 PMLocation: San Diego State University, GMCS 329See attached for the event flyer. More information is available on our website: https://www.aiaa-sd.org/events/aiaa-2025-11-20.
We hope to see you there!
