Congratulations to graduate students Patrick Chai and Christopher Jones and former graduate student Sean Currey who received the best Space History, Society, and Policy Student Paper Award at the AIAA SPACE 2013 Conference & Exposition. The conference was held in San Diego, CA on September 10-12, 2013. Their paper was titled "Review of Recent U.S. Human Space Exploration Plans Beyond Low Earth Orbit".

Patrick, Christopher and Sean were graduate research assistants in the School of AE and under the supervision of Dr. Alan Wilhite when they wrote the paper. Sean graduated with his MSAE in May 2013 and is now employed by SpaceX in California. Both Patrick and Christopher are currently PhD students in the Georgia Tech School of AE. Patrick, who is a full time student, received his BS and MS from GTAE in May 2007 and May 2010, respectively and has been a resident at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA). Christopher received his MSAE from Georgia Tech in 2009. He is a part-time PhD student and a full time Civil Servant at NASA Langley Research Center.