Category: Courses
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Courses
STIA 4403: Earth and Planetary Science
How did Earth become the planet we know today, and what can it teach us about worlds beyond our own? In this course, we’ll explore Earth as a dynamic system, from the crust that records our geologic history to the movement of water through aquifers, glaciers, and oceans, to the circulation of air that drives weather and climate. We will investigate processes such as rock formation, erosion, and biogeochemical cycles; examine the physics of blackbody radiation and the chemistry of greenhouse gases; and consider how these systems interact over short and long timescales. We’ll then journey beyond Earth to consider…
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Courses
STIA 4405: The New Space Economy
Almost single handedly, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have touched off a growing commercial space industry that NASA and the Pentagon increasingly rely on for services that for decades had been the exclusive domain of governments. Private companies now fly cargo, supplies and people to the International Space Station; they are developing the habitats that will eventually replace the aging ISS, the spacecraft that will ferry astronauts to the surface of the moon, and the spacesuits astronauts will wear while there. In addition, private companies are working to build rovers and developing the technologies, from generating power to building habitats,…
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Courses
STIA 4414: Mission Design Lab
This interdisciplinary course will take you through our shared history of exploring space, from learning what the surface of Mars looks like up close to detecting ice plumes on Saturn’s moons. We will learn how we take measurements on remote celestial bodies, what we have found so far, and how those measurements have gradually reshaped what we think about the possibilities of “life” out there. We move mission by mission, from setting foot on our Moon to sending rovers to Mars to bringing back dust from an asteroid, asking what each mission can claim given its constraints. Then students will…
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Courses
STIA 4404: Weaponization of Space
This course builds directly on the success of Space Security by moving students into the most contested and urgent debate in contemporary space policy: whether outer space has become or is becoming a warfighting domain and what that means. For decades, space was militarized primarily through enabling functions such as, communications, navigation, intelligence, and early warning while overt weaponization remained constrained by norms, treaties, and strategic restraint. That equilibrium is now eroding and strategic drift is omni present. Intensifying great-power competition, the creation of dedicated space forces, rapid commercialization, and renewed ambitions to establish a sustained human presence on the…
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Courses
STIA 4427: Analytical Frontiers: Mass Spectrometry for Space
Mass spectrometry is a foundational analytical technique for identifying and characterizing molecules, and it plays a central role in planetary exploration. This course introduces the core principles of mass spectrometry, with an emphasis on how the technique is adapted and applied to spaceflight. Students will examine how molecules are ionized, separated according to their mass to charge ratio, and detected to produce a mass spectrum. They will learn to interpret spectral data, including peak patterns, isotopic signatures, fragmentation behavior, and relative abundances. Throughout the course, students will develop practical skills for reading and interpreting spectra, assessing data quality, and understanding…
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Courses
STIA 4409: Orbital Dynamics
Orbital Dynamics are the physical and mathematical principles governing the motion of all objects in space—from satellites orbiting Earth to spacecraft traveling toward the Moon and beyond. This course introduces Newtonian gravitation, Kepler’s laws, satellite motion in cislunar space, including the three-body problem, and key elements of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Students will learn how these invisible “rules of the road,” dictated by gravity, momentum and energy, bound how space can be accessed, used, and ultimately governed. Familiarity with fundamental calculus is helpful but not required. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with an understanding…
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Courses
LAW 3172: Law and National Security Space Operations
This course explores the development of law (domestic and international) governing space operations generally, application of the law to present day national security activities, and emerging issues in national security space law. The course will address the impact of the UN space treaties to national security activities, international and domestic law governing national security space operations, the role of commercial space actors in conflict, and current issues in national security space law. It will also consider U.S. strategic competitors’ (Russia and China) approaches to the law of space operations. Course information
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Courses
BIOL 4947: Pop-Up Astrobiology Lab I
Welcome to Pop-Up Labs! In the first semester of this course, we will to tackle real-world astrobiology research questions. Regardless of where samples derive from, we’ll enter the world of extremophile microbiology and discover something new. In the fall semester, we will design our project in collaboration with this year’s astrobiology partners, collect and inventory samples, extract DNA, and generate metagenomic sequencing data to address our questions of interest. The course will continue in the spring semester, and the year will culminate in a project proposal and presentation that motivates our research within the broader scientific literature and clearly explains…
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Courses
SEST 6567: Space Technologies and Security
This course examines the extent to which spacepower doctrine, concepts, and operations influence national security strategy and international security. It identifies key space policy issues facing the United States and places them in the larger context of technological advances and a changing international strategic environment. The course will briefly examine the historical and policy foundations for U.S. and international space programs and activities. Key documents to be assessed will include U.S. presidential policy directives, Executive Orders, national strategies and policies, and other high-level documents that provide guidance to U.S. space sectors and activities. U.S. space sectors are defined as national…
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Courses
ERTH 4010: Environmental GIS
Students will learn how to work with geospatial data to understand and address environmental issues. Popular GIS tools (such as ArcGIS) will be used to create maps for the effective communication of many types of environmental data. Relevant applications in areas such as climate science, biodiversity monitoring, and human-ecosystem interactions will be explored. More advanced topics such as geospatial statistics, gap-filling, and filtering will also be covered. This course will count as a quantitative reasoning requirement toward the BS-ES degree; also counts toward the CAS QRDL requirement. Course information