MECH&AE 161A · MAE 161AIntroduction to Astronautics
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering · 4 units · Undergraduate upper division (100-199)
Recommended: course 82. Spaceflight, including two-body and three-body problem, Kepler laws, and Keplerian orbits. Ground track and taxonomy of common orbits. Orbital and transfer maneuvers, patched conics, perturbation theory, low-thrust trajectories, spacecraft pointing, and spacecraft attitude control. Space mission design, space environment, rendezvous, reentry, and launch.
Letter grading.
When it runs
- Fall 2025
- Fall 2026
Scheduled, not typical — from UCLA’s Schedule of Classes, which publishes Fall 2025 through Spring 2027 and nothing before it.
Requisites
Official UCLA wording
Enforced requisite: course 102.
BruinTree reads · Prerequisite
confidence 1.00 · from textRequires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
MECH&AE 161A
- MECH&AE 102Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies
- MECH&AE 101Statics and Strength of Materials
- MATH 33ALinear Algebra and Applications
- PHYSICS 1APhysics for Scientists and Engineers: Mechanics
1 direct requisite. Showing 13 courses over 3 levels; the branches marked with a count carry on past it. Every course here opens its own tree.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
MECH&AE 161A
- MECH&AE 161BIntroduction to Space Technology
- MECH&AE 161CSpacecraft Design
1 course lists this as a requisite. The whole downstream is here — 2 courses over 2 levels. Every course here opens its own tree.