Her last name may translate to moon in Spanish, but that’s not the only reason Tatiana Luna is passionate about space. She chose to study aerospace engineering when she came to the University of Florida, and has had many hands-on experiences that have confirmed her love for outer space.
With aerospace engineering, Tatiana believes that you learn the fundamentals and can build on them further in your next courses. One aspect of her major that she specifically enjoys is design.
“My favorite class has been Senior Design 2, where I got to make an autopilot controller for our team’s plane,” said Tatiana. “Propulsion was a great class, too, because it tied together compressible flow, thermodynamics, a little of rocketry and airplane propulsion.”
The engineering department has a lot of design teams, which fed into her passion as well. She was involved with the rocket team, in which her team competes in the NASA student launch initiative every year. Last year, her team had the honor of winning first place in the Best Altitude Category.
Although college has been fulfilling for Tatiana, her journey doesn’t end with her undergraduate degree. She is going on to pursue a PhD in mechanical engineering at Columbia University.
“I start at Columbia in August. I’ll be doing research in robotics, so I’m changing majors. After I graduate, I still want to go into the aerospace field and do industry research on space robotics, either with NASA or some other company.”
Photo Credit: Jimmy Yawn