Upcoming section events.
San Diego: Palm Springs Air Museum
AIAA SD Trip to the Palm Springs Air Museum
Come join us for a day of high-flying history as we visit the Palm Springs Air Museum. Established in 1996, the museum has stood for years holding decades of aerospace history. The museum consists of wonderful exhibits including the Lockheed Martin F-117A Nighthawk, Grumman F-14A Tomcat, Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, and many more! Transportation and admission are included with your ticket (food not provided).
Please fill out the RSVP form below to pay and claim your spot.
RSVP and Payment Link:
https://aiaa-san-diego-section.square.site/product/palm-desert-air-museum-tour/GWSRYW5PCVLUPY5RPWCRKBIG
Where:
Palm Springs Air Museum (745 N Gene Autry Trail, Palm Springs, CA 92262)
When:
Saturday, Mar 21 st
Timeline:
7am- DEPART from carpool spot (8225 Mira Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92126)
10am- Arrive at museum (Meet Around Lobby)
2pm- Depart museum
5pm- Arrive back at meetup spot
(We will be leaving at 7am, however, other times are subject to change due to traffic and other conditions)
Cost:
AIAA Students- $15
AIAA Members- $20
Non-Members- $25
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 Diego - Aerospace Trivia!
Are you ready to test your knowledge of the skies? The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) San Diego Section is excited to invite you to an exhilarating Aviation Themed Trivia Night! Whether you're an engineer, a student, or simply passionate about aviation, join us for an evening of friendly competition and camaraderie.
Date: Wednesday, February 18th, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Embolden Beer Company (8655 Production Ave, San Diego, CA 92121)
Cost: $10 / $15 / $20 for students / members / non-members
Link to Event Page: https://www.aiaa-sd.org/events/aiaa-trivia-2026
Link to Tickets: https://square.link/u/Bvc3PUxO
Prepare for an engaging evening filled with questions covering a range of aviation topics, from historical milestones to cutting-edge technology. Challenge your peers, showcase your expertise, and perhaps learn something new along the way!
This event is a fantastic opportunity to network with fellow aviation enthusiasts, exchange ideas, and celebrate our shared passion for aerospace engineering and innovation.
Your admission ticket covers pizza, a drink, and a night of fun! We hope to see you there.
We hope to see you there!
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.
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!
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!
