As the Wright Brothers’ historic first flight on Dec. 17, 1903 is celebrated this month, Iowa State’s own aeronautical and aerospace programs are looking to the future.

According to the 2000 book, “Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State, One Person’s Story,” by Paul J. Hermann, temporary associate professor of aerospace engineering, aeronautical and aerospace engineering have been a feature at Iowa State for more than 70 years.

In the book, Hermann said the curriculum budded as a series of courses in mechanical engineering, becoming a separate curriculum in late 1941, broke away as a separate department in late 1942, and changed its name from Aeronautical to aerospace engineering in late 1960.”

John Jacobson, assistant professor of aerospace engineering, said the aerospace engineering department at Iowa State held a celebration of the Wright Brothers’ flight, bringing guest lecturer Tom Crouch, a senior curator of the division of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum, to speak last month.

“We have done extensive research on CFD, or computation fluid dynamics, which is how planes move through the air, and we have also significantly contributed to wing icing research,” Jacobson said.

He said Iowa State is currently receiving contributions from NASA to do such research.

Johnson said the Spacecraft and Systems Operations Laboratory is working on a number of programs with NASA, and it is being funded through the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, which consists of Iowa State University, Drake University, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa.

Currently, the Iowa State aerospace engineering program consists of more than 400 undergraduate students and is among the most prestigious in the nation, Jacobson said.

“It is in the top 10 percent of the nation. It’s not like there are thousands of aerospace engineering programs across the nation, like there is with English for example, but we still are near the top,” Jacobsen said.

Today, the aerospace engineering department works with other departments on campus for research purposes.

Jacobson said there is work being done with the agriculture department to study how corn stalks withstand wind, and additional work is being done with the meteorology department to study tornadoes. A tornado simulator is currently under construction in Howe Hall.

Jacobson said the research the aerospace engineering department participates in varies from studying anything that moves through water or air to how buildings and bridges stand up in the wind.

Jacobson said three important Iowa State alumni who have gone on to impact the field of aerospace engineering are Clayton Anderson, T.A. Wilson and Vance D. Coffman. Anderson is an astronaut for NASA, Wilson once served as chairman and CEO of Boeing and Coffman became the chairman and chief executive officer of Lockheed-Martin in 2000.

Jacobson said many of today’s aerospace engineering students are working toward a future of positive impact in the field. He said there are students on Cooperative Education Experiences, where they work with the same company for three periods of time.

“One of our students is helping NASA with the International Space Station by designing storage compartments, trying to find how to maximize the amount of materials one can put into a container,” Johnson said. “This is an important problem that astronauts face.”