High School Projects
Hands-on projects for students with basic math and science. No prior coding experience required — every project walks you through setup from scratch.
36 projects
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Build a Model Rocket Flight Computer
Log altitude, acceleration, and temperature on a real launch
Build an Arduino-based flight computer that records sensor data during a model rocket launch. Learn embedded programming, data logging, and basic rocketry while creating something you can actually fly.
Satellite Image Classification
Teach a computer to read the Earth from space
Train a machine learning model to classify satellite images by land type — urban, forest, water, agriculture. A perfect first ML project using real remote sensing data.
Design and Test a Wing in XFLR5
See how airfoil shape controls lift, drag, and stall
Use XFLR5, the open-source airfoil analysis tool, to design a wing and analyze its aerodynamic performance. Understand lift, drag, and stall behavior through real engineering software.
Drone Obstacle Course with ArduPilot SITL
Program a virtual drone to fly itself through waypoints
Use ArduPilot's software-in-the-loop simulator to program a drone that autonomously navigates an obstacle course. No hardware needed — everything runs on your laptop.
Classify Satellites with TensorFlow
Teach a neural network to tell a weather satellite from a GPS bird.
Build and train a convolutional neural network in TensorFlow to classify satellite images by type. You will collect a small labeled dataset, preprocess the images, and evaluate your model's accuracy—no prior ML experience required.
Track the ISS with Ansys STK
See exactly when and where the space station will fly over your town.
Use the free Ansys STK software to model the International Space Station's orbit, generate ground tracks, and predict when it will be visible from your location. You will learn the fundamentals of orbital mechanics without writing a single line of code.
Design a Model Rocket in SolidWorks
Go from a blank screen to a printable 3D rocket you could actually launch.
Use SolidWorks for Students to model every component of a model rocket—nose cone, body tube, fins, and motor mount—then assemble them into a complete vehicle and generate manufacturing drawings. No CAD experience required.
Build an Orbital Simulator in Julia
Write the math that keeps satellites in orbit—from scratch.
Use the Julia programming language to numerically integrate the equations of motion for a satellite and animate its orbit around Earth. You will implement the two-body problem step by step, learning both the physics and the code as you go.
Predict Engine Failure with Kaggle Data
Use real NASA sensor data to predict when a jet engine is about to fail.
Download NASA's C-MAPSS turbofan engine dataset from Kaggle and train a machine learning model to predict Remaining Useful Life (RUL)—how many cycles an engine has left before it needs maintenance. Learn how predictive maintenance saves lives and billions of dollars in aviation.
Predict Airfoil Lift with PyTorch
Replace a wind tunnel with a neural network that predicts lift in milliseconds.
Train a fully-connected neural network in PyTorch to predict the lift coefficient of an airfoil from its geometric shape parameters. You will use NASA's open airfoil database as training data and learn how ML can accelerate aerodynamic design.
Solve the Heat Equation with a PINN
Use a neural network to simulate how heat flows through a spacecraft wall.
Use DeepXDE, a Python library for physics-informed neural networks, to solve the 1D heat equation without writing a traditional finite-element solver. Learn how PINNs are changing the way engineers approach thermal analysis in aerospace.
Land on the Moon with Reinforcement Learning
Train an AI agent to fire rocket thrusters and touch down safely—in simulation.
Use OpenAI Gymnasium's LunarLander-v3 environment and the Stable-Baselines3 library to train a reinforcement learning agent that learns to land a spacecraft through trial and error—no hand-coded control laws required.
Fly a Simulated Drone with PX4
Command a virtual drone through a waypoint mission using real autopilot software.
Set up the PX4 Software-In-The-Loop (SITL) simulator with Gazebo and use Python MAVLink commands to fly a virtual quadrotor through a series of GPS waypoints. Learn the same autopilot stack used in professional drone operations worldwide.
Track Objects in Drone Video
Write a Python script that follows moving objects through aerial footage automatically.
Use OpenCV's built-in tracking algorithms to detect and follow moving objects—vehicles, people, or animals—in aerial drone video. Learn the fundamentals of computer vision: color spaces, background subtraction, contour detection, and bounding-box tracking.
Count Aircraft on a Runway with YOLO
Use a real-time object detector to automatically count planes in satellite imagery.
Run a pretrained YOLOv8 model on airport satellite images to detect and count aircraft. Learn how to use one of the most powerful object detection frameworks in computer vision without training from scratch—a key industry skill for remote sensing and airspace monitoring.
Design a Competition Aircraft in OpenVSP
Build and analyze a complete aircraft geometry using NASA's own design tool.
Use OpenVSP—NASA's free parametric aircraft geometry tool—to design a balsa-wood competition airplane, analyze its aerodynamic performance with the built-in VSPAero solver, and iterate on wing placement and tail sizing to achieve stability targets.
Design a Rocket Motor Mount in Fusion 360
Let AI reshape metal into the lightest bracket that still holds your rocket motor.
Use Fusion 360's Generative Design workspace to create an optimized rocket motor mount. You define the loads, material, and keep-out zones; the algorithm generates organic, lightweight structures that would be impossible to design by hand.
Build an Aerospace Data Logger in C
Write embedded C firmware to capture atmospheric data during a weather balloon or drone flight.
Write C firmware for an Arduino microcontroller that reads temperature, pressure, and humidity sensors at 10 Hz, stores data on an SD card, and transmits live readings over serial. Then analyze the flight data in Python to reconstruct altitude profiles.
Visualize Airflow Over a Wing with OpenFOAM
Run a real computational fluid dynamics simulation and watch the airflow come alive.
Set up and run a 2D airfoil CFD simulation in OpenFOAM using the simpleFoam steady-state solver, then visualize pressure coefficient, velocity streamlines, and the boundary layer in ParaView. No prior CFD experience required.
Plot Satellite Orbits in MATLAB
Use MATLAB to compute and visualize Keplerian orbits and ground tracks from first principles.
Write MATLAB scripts that convert orbital elements (semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination) to position vectors, plot 3D orbits around Earth, and generate ground tracks on a world map. Build intuition for how inclination and altitude shape a satellite's coverage.
Build a Virtual Aircraft Hangar
Create a photorealistic 3D aircraft hangar in NVIDIA Omniverse you can walk through in real time.
Use NVIDIA Omniverse Create to build a detailed, photorealistic hangar scene populated with aircraft models, ground support equipment, and realistic lighting. Learn Universal Scene Description (USD), the emerging standard for 3D data in aerospace digital twins.
Simulate Landing Gear Impact
Discover how much force hits the landing gear at touchdown—before building anything.
Use Siemens Simcenter student tools to set up and run a structural simulation of a landing gear drop test, visualize stress and deformation under impact loads, and identify whether the design meets safety requirements. Learn how engineers prove aircraft components are strong enough without breaking them.
Simulate Gravity with JAX
Watch planets orbit each other in a simulation you built from scratch
Use JAX to build a simple gravity simulator that models how two or three bodies orbit each other. Learn the basics of numerical integration and automatic differentiation while creating animated orbital plots.
Simulate a Heat Shield with PhysicsNeMo
Use AI to predict how heat flows through a spacecraft's thermal protection
Use NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo to train a physics-informed neural network that predicts temperature distribution in a simple heat shield geometry. Learn how AI can solve physics problems without running expensive simulations.
Build a Battery Digital Twin with Twin Builder
Create a virtual copy of a drone battery that predicts its behavior in real time
Use Ansys Twin Builder to create a simple digital twin of a lithium-polymer battery for a drone. Learn how engineers build virtual models that mirror real hardware and predict when a battery will run out of charge.
Test and Compare Material Strength with a Simple ML Model
Break things on purpose, then teach a computer to predict the results
Build and break popsicle-stick or balsa-wood structures, record their dimensions and failure forces, then train a scikit-learn linear regression model to predict strength from geometry. A hands-on bridge between physical testing and machine learning.
Predict Model Rocket Altitude from Motor Data with Python
Use real thrust curves and simple physics to predict how high your rocket will fly
Build a dataset from published model rocket motor thrust curves and basic physics, then train a scikit-learn regression model to predict peak altitude from motor impulse, rocket mass, and drag estimate. Combines rocketry fundamentals with your first predictive ML model.
Measure and Classify Sounds Around an Airport with Python
Record real-world sounds and teach a computer to tell them apart
Record or download airport-area sounds — jet engines, propeller aircraft, ground vehicles, birdsong — and train a scikit-learn classifier to distinguish sound types using simple audio features extracted with librosa. A hands-on introduction to audio machine learning.
Predict Tomorrow's Wind Speed for Flight Planning
Build a weather model that helps pilots make go/no-go decisions
Download historical airport weather data (METAR observations) and build a simple machine learning model that predicts next-day wind speed. Learn how pilots use weather forecasts for flight planning and go/no-go decisions.
Sort Good vs. Bad Parts with Image Classification
Teach a computer to inspect parts like a quality engineer
Photograph real parts (3D-printed or handmade), build a labeled image dataset, and train an image classifier to sort pass vs. fail. Learn the basics of computer vision and quality control in aerospace manufacturing.
Track Nearby Aircraft with ADS-B and Visualize Patterns
Tap into live aircraft data and discover hidden flight patterns
Use the OpenSky Network API to collect real aircraft position data, plot flight paths on a map, compute basic statistics, and use k-means clustering to discover flight patterns. Your first data science project with real-time aviation data.
Calculate and Compare Carbon Footprints of Different Flights
Turn flight data into climate insight with Python
Use public flight data to calculate CO2 emissions per passenger-kilometer for different aircraft types and routes. Build a simple regression model that predicts emissions from distance and aircraft size.
Build a Word Cloud and Classifier from Aviation Safety Reports
Mine real incident reports to discover what goes wrong in the cockpit
Download NASA ASRS incident summaries, create word clouds for different incident categories, then train a simple text classifier to categorize new reports. A hands-on introduction to natural language processing with real safety data.
Build a Flutter Demo and Predict Vibration Frequency
Feel aeroelasticity with a homemade wing in front of a fan
Build a simple cantilever wing from cardboard or balsa, measure vibration frequency at different wind speeds using a phone accelerometer, then fit a regression model to predict frequency from speed.
Measure Heat Dissipation and Predict Cooling with Python
Newton's law of cooling meets machine learning in your kitchen
Heat small metal and plastic samples, log temperature over time, fit exponential cooling curves, and predict how long different materials take to cool. A hands-on experiment connecting thermal physics to data science.
Optimise Wing Rib Spacing with FEA
Place ribs where the loads are—not where tradition says.
Use SolidWorks and ANSYS to investigate whether non-uniform rib spacing in a wing structure can reduce weight or stress compared to evenly spaced ribs. You will design a wing box, run static structural simulations under bending loads, and compare uniform versus load-adapted rib layouts to find a more efficient internal structure.
Other Levels
Undergraduate
Engineering and CS projects for college students. Expect to work with real industry tools, write substantial code, and produce results you can show in interviews.
32 projects →Advanced
Research-grade projects for grad students and ambitious undergrads. These involve cutting-edge techniques like PINNs, reinforcement learning, and multi-sensor fusion.
32 projects →