Aerospace education shouldn't depend on your zip code
SPACEDU started with one cart of cardboard rockets and a school that couldn't afford a lab. The goal hasn't changed: put real engineering work in the hands of every K–12 student, not just the ones with a maker space at home.
It began with a bad lesson
Our founder, an aerospace structures engineer, was invited to teach a Grade 5 class about flight. She gave the lecture she'd been given as a student — four forces, neat diagram, polite silence.
The next week she brought straws, paper and a tape measure instead. Within an hour a ten-year-old had worked out that adding weight to the nose stopped the tumbling — and could explain why. That gap between the two lessons is the whole company.
Since 2019 we've run programs in 84 schools, trained hundreds of teachers to keep them going, and kept the same rule: nothing gets explained until it's been tested.
Mission
To democratise aerospace and maker education for K–12 students — real tools, real materials, real failure, in ordinary classrooms.
Vision
A generation that reaches for a prototype before an opinion — students who assume hard problems are solvable because they've solved a few.
Three commitments we don't compromise
They sound simple. Holding to them is most of the work.
Hands before heads
Students touch the phenomenon before they hear the term for it. The vocabulary lands because there's already an experience attached.
Failure is data
A crashed drone or a tumbling rocket is the most useful thing that can happen in a session, provided we log why.
Design thinking throughout
Every program runs the same loop — understand, build, test, revise — so the method transfers well beyond our labs.
We'd rather a student build something imperfect than watch something perfect.
The people in the labs
Aisha Nandi
Founder & Head of Curriculum
Former aerospace structures engineer; spent six years running after-school rocketry before writing the SPACEDU arc.
Marcus Feld
Director of Drone Programs
Commercial UAS pilot and instructor. Built the simulator-to-hardware pathway used across every campus.
Sofia Ramírez
Lead Maker Educator
Industrial designer turned teacher. Runs the design-thinking cycles and teacher certification.
Tom Whitaker
Electronics Lab Lead
Embedded systems engineer. Believes every twelve-year-old should own a soldering iron, supervised.
Curiosity is the prerequisite. We handle the rest.
Sit in on a free trial class, or talk to us about bringing SPACEDU into your school.