NASA is putting $10.5 million behind a bet that Georgia's aerospace industry needs welders and machinists just as badly as it needs engineers. The agency named Georgia Tech one of seven institutions nationwide to host a new Aerospace Skilled Technical Workforce Hub, a designation that comes with federal money aimed squarely at students who have no interest in a traditional four-year degree.
The award, announced Wednesday, distributes funding across institutions in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas and Utah, according to NASA. Georgia Tech's slice of the program has a name: the Southeast Space Technology & Aerospace Readiness Skills Hub, or SE-STARS, which will scale up the university's existing Starfleet Academy curriculum into formal certificate and diploma pathways, per NASA's program materials. As reported by CBS News Atlanta, the NASA Office of STEM Engagement selected Georgia Tech for the partnership, and the program will offer courses leading to short-term certificates and associate degrees rather than bachelor's programs.
Why Georgia Tech Got the Nod
According to the CBS Atlanta report, Georgia Tech was chosen partly because of its existing relationships with technical colleges, high school programs and aerospace employers across the state. The Georgia Tech Space Research Institute will direct faculty aerospace expertise toward the program, and the university is partnering with Georgia Southern University, the Technical College System of Georgia, and the Georgia Aerospace and Defense Alliance as program partners, the station reports.
Stephen Ruffin, who leads the Georgia Space Grant Consortium, told the station that program courses are typically shorter than degree courses and that he plans to develop curricula meant to strengthen U.S. competitiveness in aerospace. Notably, per the same report, the Georgia Space Grant Consortium — which NASA also funds — has historically focused on education from kindergarten through Ph.D. rather than skilled workforce training specifically, making this a new lane for the state's NASA-backed education apparatus.
Filling a Welding and Machining Gap
Elaine Ho, cited in the CBS Atlanta piece, said there is an urgent need for workers in welding and machining roles — the kind of hands-on trades that keep aerospace manufacturing lines running but rarely show up in a university engineering curriculum. The program is designed to serve industry workers seeking reskilling in areas like advanced manufacturing and AI-enabled manufacturing, the station notes, while also offering hands-on learning for people pursuing associate degrees, internships in space-related industries, and help paying for courses when needed.
The Technical College System of Georgia's network of 22 colleges and 88 campuses will serve as regional instructional centers, according to NASA's program description, connecting students statewide to local training and aerospace apprenticeships. NASA also outlines annual “Teach the Teacher” institutes meant to train local instructors so the curriculum can spread quickly across those campuses. That speed matters: NASA expects to measure program results after the first year, according to the CBS Atlanta report, which puts pressure on Georgia Tech to show fast, tangible outcomes if the funding stream is to continue.
An Industry Under Pressure to Grow
The stakes for Georgia are considerable. Aerospace products are the state's number one export, and Georgia's aerospace industry supports more than 800 companies and roughly 200,000 residents working in aviation, manufacturing, repair and operations, per the CBS Atlanta account — a workforce the state values at $57 billion. That figure lines up with separate reporting from the Metro Atlanta Chamber, which put the state's aerospace and defense cluster's annual economic impact at an estimated $57.5 billion across more than 800 companies. Separately, the Aerospace Industries Association has reported that Georgia's aerospace and defense sector directly employed 32,955 workers in 2025 at an average annual wage of $117,447.
Georgia's export numbers underscore why the industry has become a state priority. Civilian aircraft and auxiliary parts generated $16.4 billion in overseas sales in 2025, helping push the state's total exports past $60.2 billion, according to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. Industry momentum has been building on the private side too: in August 2025, five major employers — Gulfstream Aerospace, Lockheed Martin, Rolls-Royce North America, FlightSafety International and RTX — formed the Georgia Aerospace & Defense Alliance to strengthen the state's workforce and supply chain, a group that now serves as a core industry partner in Georgia Tech's new hub.
Not the University's First Non-Traditional Push
The SE-STARS Hub also builds on hands-on programming Georgia Tech was already running before the federal grant arrived. The university's manufacturing pilot facility provides hands-on education for high school students who may enter skilled trades, and the Georgia Tech Space Research Institute previously seeded a student-led effort called the Mars mission built inside a silo, which built a 24/7 campus mission control center and ran a 10-day Mars simulation inside an Arkansas missile silo involving students from more than 30 universities.
Georgia Tech's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering was ranked the No. 2 undergraduate aerospace engineering program in the country in 2025 by U.S. News & World Report, a distinction that highlights the contrast at the heart of this new initiative: the university is nationally known for producing elite engineers, but this program is aimed at the technicians, welders and machinists who build and maintain the hardware those engineers design. For comparison, under the same NASA award cycle, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities received $1.5 million to train 1,800 to 2,400 students and deliver up to 700 aerospace technical credentials over three years, according to AVweb — a smaller allocation aimed at a similar goal of moving more students into skilled technician roles faster.
NASA's state hubs initiative frames the effort as part of a broader push to support NASA missions to the moon and beyond, arguing that the agency's ambitions require not just engineers but a pipeline of certified technicians ready to work. For Georgia, where aerospace manufacturing has led the state's export economy for five consecutive years, the SE-STARS Hub represents an attempt to make sure the workforce keeps pace with the industry's growth — with NASA watching closely after year one to decide whether the funding continues.
