Congratulations to our North Texas Colleges!
International Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC)
15-21 June 2026
Spaceport Midland, TX
15th Place - UT Dallas (10K’ Student Design) pictured above
31st Place - UT Arlington (10K’ COTS) pictured below
52nd Place - Tarleton State (10K’ COTS)
126th Place - Baylor (30K’ Multi-Stage)
Out of 141 International Teams!
Special Awards
UT Arlington
- Jim Furfaro Award for Technical Excellence |
- Charles Hoult Award for Modeling & Simulation
- Nancy Squires Team Spirit Award - Runner Up
|UT Dallas
- 10K’ Solid SRAD - 2nd Place
Granbury High School Aviation Program|
Attached is an update on some of the exciting news about the Granbury High School Aviation Program’s classes, students, airplanes, and flight instruction from the last school year. Or Click HERE to see the newsletter.
Moon Day STEM Event
Saturday, 18 July 2026
Frontiers of Flight Museum, Dallas Love Field
6911 Lemmon Ave, Dallas, TX 75209 (214) 350-3600
Moon Day celebrates the Apollo 11 landing anniversary and showcases the past, present, and future of space exploration. AIAA NTX along with SETP Southwest Section will again participate with our Flight Test Range & Sim.
1. Design, Build, Decorate a paper airplane.|
2. Fly it on the Flight Test Range to measure time and distance.
3. Compute the resultant velocity, convert it from fps to mph.
4. Fly the Sim.
Volunteer! Morning or afternoon shifts available (please specify). Pizza volunteer lunch provided. Come early to fly our sim and get a quick guided tour of our locally-designed & produced aircraft in the museum (F-16, F-8, A-7, etc). Stay late to meet the astronaut for a picture & autograph. Or do both!
Keynote Speaker
Carl E. Walz (Colonel, USAF, Ret.) served as a NASA Astronaut (1990-2008). He logged 231 days in space on four space flights including the 196-day Expedition-4 crew aboard the International Space Station. Walz conducted three spacewalks totaling more than 18 hours evaluating tools for the Hubble Space Telescope refurbishment and outfitting the International Space Station. Walz graduated in 1983 as a Flight Test Engineer at the USAF Test Pilot School, Edwards Air Force Base, California.
You’re invited!
UTARI Behind the Scenes Showcase
Friday, 24 July 2026
2-4pm
UTA welcomes you and your colleagues to join UTARI and TMAC for a Behind the Scenes Showcase on Friday, July 24th 2-4pm.
This is a come-and-go style open house, so feel free to join them any time between 2 and 4pm that afternoon.
All the labs, including the outdoor netted drone facility, will be open and demos will be going on throughout that time.
Anyone is welcome – businesses, researchers, faculty, students, etc. Pass this invite along to anyone you think might be interested.
Click here to register!
AIAA NTX with the UTA AIAA Student Branch and
The Society of Experimental Test Pilots present
Spy Pilot: Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 Incident, and a Controversial Cold War Legacy
Presentation & Book Signing
by Francis Gary Powers Jr.
Wednesday, 29 July 2026
7pm
UT Arlington SEIR Bldg., Room 294 (2nd floor)
655 W Mitchell St, Arlington, TX 76010
Reservations not necessary. Parking pass info below (please register your vehicle to avoid fine).
Francis Gary Powers Sr. (pictured above) was an American pilot who served as a USAF officer and CIA employee. Powers was shot down while flying a secret CIA mission over the Soviet Union. He survived but was captured and sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet prison for espionage. Powers served 21 months of his sentence before being released in a prisoner swap in 1962, which was made into the 2015 Steven Spielberg thriller, Bridge of Spies, about the spy exchange between KGB spy Rudolph Abel and Gary Powers. After returning to the US, Gary Powers worked at Lockheed as a test pilot for the U-2 and later as a helicopter pilot for Los Angeles news station KNBC. He died in 1977, when the KNBC helicopter he was flying crashed.
Francis Gary Powers, Jr. is the son of Francis Gary Powers, Sr. He lectures internationally and appears regularly on C-SPAN, the History, Discovery, and A&E channels. Gary is the author of Letters from a Soviet Prison (2017), Spy Pilot (2019), Enemy Territory (2022), The Berlin Airlift (2024), Cold War Virginia (2024), and Protecting America: Cold War Defensive Sites (2024). He is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of The Cold War Museum located at Vint Hill, VA and was the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee for the Cold War Theme Study which assisted the National Park Service to identify historic Cold War sites for preservation. In 2015, he consulted on Bridge of Spies. Gary is a past Board Member of the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace and an Honorary Board Member of the International Spy Museum. Because of his efforts to honor Cold War veterans the Junior Chamber of Commerce selected him as one of the “Ten Outstanding Young Americans” for 2002. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Philosophy and Master's Degrees in Public Administration and U.S. History.
Parking Pass at UTA
See Event Parking Areas on attached Map
To register for parking:
1. Follow the link to MavPark- https://utarlington.aimsparking.com/permits/?cmd=new_event
2. Select Student Organization Event
3. Select Gary Powers Jr. Speaker Event
4. Enter voucher code aiaa@UTA
5. Select permit type (EVT-COMP) Fac/Staff Surface Lots (After5PM)
6. Select the active date
7. Add vehicle info and confirm (make sure to complete submission!)