AeroAstro Student Groups
The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department teams, groups, and clubs offer excellent opportunities for activities with peers who share common interests and enthusiasm. Students are welcome to contact any of the organizations listed below. (Note that some of the groups also welcome department alumni, staff, and faculty.) If you're interested in organizing a new group or club, visit the MIT Association of Student Activities website. Also, AeroAstro Student Services will be glad to assist you.
The MIT AIAA chapter is a student-run organization that coordinates many activities geared towards students majoring in aeronautics and astronautics. These activities include an internship colloquium, research talks, company visits, student-faculty social events, and a paper airplane contest.
The MIT DBF team is composed mostly of undergraduate students, but also open to graduate students, who compete in the annual AIAA Design/Build/Fly competition. The competition involves designing, manufacturing, testing, and operating a radio controlled aircraft to meet mission specifications as specified in the competition rules.
The MIT Flying Club, headquartered in AeroAstro, seeks to motivate, encourage, and facilitate affordable, hands-on experiences in full-scale flying for the MIT community. It fulfills this mission by offering flight training scholarships to members, hosting helicopter fly-ins to the MIT campus, organizing fly-outs to various New England airports, and sponsoring seminars.
GA3 is the AeroAstro graduate student group. It promotes graduate student well being, advocates student interests, and fosters a sense of community within the department. GA3 sponsors numerous events including lectures and seminars, and social activities.
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) MIT Student Chapter is a group of students and scholars interested in the field of human factors and ergonomics. They organize events and activities for the benefit of the students, the human factors community, and HFES.
AeroAstro is an MIT Intramural Sports affiliate. The department fields teams in soccer, football, hockey, softball, basketball, and other sports. Various sports are played year round, and participation is free. Students, staff, and alumni may participate.
The MIT Rocket Team is a student group focused on rocket-related projects. The team has focused on projects ranging form designing and building a custom centrifugal liquid engine, to development of lighter stronger composite airframes.
The MIT Satellite Team was formed due to high student interest in developing spacecraft. The program allows excited students an opportunity to get involved in a cross-discipline, full-scale project that will be sent into space. The team includes more than 40 undergraduate students from a variety of majors. The students work closely with MIT professors and industry experts from a variety of fields from communications to structures to management.
SEDS, an organization with many chapters nationwide and internationally, promotes space exploration and development through projects, outreach, conferences, and other activities. It was founded at MIT in 1980.
WGA3 is a group for graduate women in Aero/Astro at MIT. Its objective is to
build a community and encourage relationships between graduate women in
aerospace engineering, women faculty in AeroAstro, and women throughout MIT.