Tejas Pandit

I got into aerospace by way of the night sky. Astronomy came first. Then it sank in that people could actually walk on Mars someday, and that someone has to figure out how they'll live there. I wanted to be one of those people.

That's what my research is about. You can't ship everything a base needs from Earth, so I work on models for pulling useful resources out of the soil that's already there: water from the Moon, and perchlorate from Mars for making propellant.

Outside of class I climb, play basketball, and get out on hikes as often as I can. My favorite aircraft is the Concorde, a passenger jet that crossed the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound. It still looks like the future to me.