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Subject offerings of new and developing areas of knowledge in aerospace engineering intended to augment existing formal courses. Topics and prerequisites vary for each section. See Class Schedule or departmental course information for both. Course Information: May be repeated in the same or separate terms if topics vary to a maximum of 12 hours.

Topic: Spacecraft Rendezvous and Proximity Operations. This course provides a comprehensive treatment of spacecraft rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (RPO), with a primary emphasis on autonomous trajectory design and guidance, navigation, and control (GNC). Students develop a rigorous understanding of relative motion dynamics, rendezvous and proximity trajectory design, and closed-loop guidance and navigation under realistic constraints in sensing, actuation, and operational implementation. Classical impulsive and low-thrust rendezvous methods are integrated with contemporary optimization-based guidance and safety-critical constraint enforcement. The course also introduces enabling autonomy topics that increasingly shape modern RPO systems, including perception-driven proximity operations, robotic capture and grasping in microgravity, teleoperations, and verification and validation of RPO. Prerequisites: AE 402, AE 353 (or equivalent), AE 454 (or equivalent), AE 485 (option