Reed Spurling is a senior majoring in Aerospace Engineering with minors in Math and Planetary Sciences (PTYS). Favorite PTYS courses include PTYS 411, Geology and Geophysics of the Solar System and PTYS 442, Mars. Another favorite was Regents' Professor Dante Lauretta's Spacecraft Mission Design class; for this course, students were split into three teams to design concepts for robotic solar system missions. This classwork enabled Reed to successfully apply for a summer internship at KinetX, a company that navigates the Lucy and New Horizons solar system missions for NASA.

Reed works with Drs. Virginia Gulick and Stefano Nerozzi to analyze flood channel systems on Mars. He maps the locations and sizes of impact craters in and around these channels and then runs statistics on the data to determine an approximate age for the channels. Reed also works with Aerospace professors Sergey Shkarayev and Adrien Bouskela on communication systems for dynamic soaring sailplane gliders. Engineless sailplanes should be able to fly for extended periods of time above Earth, Mars, Venus, Titan, and other planets with sufficient atmospheres, bridging gaps in observing capabilities between orbiting missions and surface missions.

Reed is the founder of the UArizona Near Space Club and is planning on a career in solar system exploration. When not in class or mapping craters, Reed likes to cook and read.