Jeanette Epps, PhD

Four weeks left to submit your abstracts to SSDM 2026, 8-10 June 2026, Long Beach, CA, https://lnkd.in/dT5HhCew. I'm pleased to chair the Structural Dynamics Track at SSDM 2026, ASME's premier conference for aerospace structures, structural dynamics, and materials. The Structural Dynamics Track contains research topics on flexible aircraft and spacecraft responses and components under various dynamic loads from multiple disciplines, such as aerodynamics, thermodynamics, acoustics, control, and flight mechanics. In addition, the characteristics of stability boundary, post-stability behavior, aeroelastic analysis, and the control and suppression of unstable vibration are of interest to the track. Submissions of papers regarding the new studies in analytical, computational, and experimental structural dynamics are welcome. I've included the attached document, which provides more details on the Structural Dynamics Track, including the full topic descriptions. ASME (The American Society of Mechanical Engineers)

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UTA Research Institute researchers, led by Dr. Yijing Xie, have secured multiple accolades in aerospace and intelligent control. Highlights include papers accepted by AIAA Aviation 2026 and Automatica regarding model-free inverse reinforcement learning and distributed optimization. These NASA-supported works advance safety-critical systems, specifically VTOL flight and robotic arms, showcasing UTA’s leadership in autonomous intent inference and real-time resource allocation. Read more: shorturl.at/52MNi #UTAResearch #MavUp

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Artemis II's successful translunar injection is a fine reminder that, in #astrodynamics, even the most familiar terms are often doing more work than people realize. With the phrase now appearing everywhere, it seems worth noting that #translunar does not, strictly speaking, mean "toward the Moon," as the public—and, candidly, more than a few space engineers—often assume. The prefix trans- means across or beyond, and the OED is quite explicit that translunar means "beyond the moon," while #transearth names the Earth-return leg in astronautical usage. That may sound like a minor philological indulgence, but it is actually dynamical common sense. A translunar injection is not merely a burn that points a spacecraft at the Moon. It is a maneuver that places the vehicle on a trajectory that crosses the circumlunar boundary and into the broader Earth–Moon geometry, where the Moon may then do what celestial bodies have always done best: change the outcome while appearing not to intervene at all. Which is also why the term is not cislunar injection. Cis- means "on this side of," and in its proper sense names the Earthward region within the Moon's orbit, not the entire Earth–Moon enterprise under whatever branding convenience happens to prevail this season. Those who have spent any time with gravity assists will recognize why this matters. The Moon, in such a story, is not merely a destination; it is part of the mechanism. One does not simply fly to it. One flies into a geometry in which the far-side passage can bend the trajectory and reorganize the energy bookkeeping. The same logic holds on the way home. Language shapes intuition, and intuition shapes how people imagine the architecture of spaceflight. If we reduce translunar to "toward the Moon," we make the trajectory sound like a straightforward errand. It is nothing of the sort. It is a negotiated passage through a structured three-body environment. #ArtemisII, in that sense, is not only a return to deep-space flight; it is also a useful occasion to remember that in our field, as in most old and respectable disciplines, the most revealing distinctions are sometimes hiding in the smallest words.

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