Craig Kluever’s childhood dream of becoming an astronaut turned instead into the pursuit of the science behind the rockets. Today, the Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering seeks to solve the kind of problems involved in space missions—like how to take off, and most importantly, how to return safely to Earth. Kluever came to this area of research in graduate school when he had a fellowship with NASA, developing computer programs to help solve problems involved with mission designs that use electric propulsion (as opposed to chemical propulsion). At the time, Kluever recalls, electric propulsion was a brand new technology, and NASA needed predictive computer models to calculate missions, for example to map a trajectory from Earth to Mars using electric propulsion.