Detecting DNA in space
If there is life on Mars, it’s not too farfetched to believe that such Martian species may share genetic roots with life on Earth. More than 3.5 billion years ago, a blitz of meteors ricocheted around...
View ArticleTerramechanics research aims to keep Mars rovers rolling
In May 2009, the Mars rover Spirit cracked through a crusty layer of Martian topsoil, sinking into softer underlying sand. The unexpected sand trap permanently mired the vehicle, despite months of...
View ArticleMaking Martian clouds on Earth
At first glance, Mars’ clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA’s Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude wisps, similar to our cirrus clouds....
View ArticleAsteroids' close encounters with Mars
For nearly as long as astronomers have been able to observe asteroids, a question has gone unanswered: Why do the surfaces of most asteroids appear redder than meteorites — the remnants of asteroids...
View ArticleExploring Mars with the Curiosity rover: The search for ancient habitable...
NASA Curiosity rover chief scientist John Grotzinger will present a public lecture at MIT on Friday, May 9, centered on NASA’s $2.5 billion Curiosity rover mission to Mars.The Curiosity rover mission,...
View ArticleGoing to the Red Planet
Whenever the first NASA astronauts arrive on Mars, they will likely have MIT to thank for the oxygen they breathe — and for the oxygen needed to burn rocket fuel that will launch them back home to...
View ArticleMars One (and done?)
In 2012, the “Mars One” project, led by a Dutch nonprofit, announced plans to establish the first human colony on the Red Planet by 2025. The mission would initially send four astronauts on a one-way...
View ArticleAlumna takes up space on Saturday mornings
Move over Saturday morning cartoons, there’s a new space show in town. Emily Calandrelli SM ’13 is the host and co-producer of Xploration Outer Space, a new FOX series that explores space and big...
View ArticleTo save on weight, a detour to the moon is the best route to Mars
Launching humans to Mars may not require a full tank of gas: A new MIT study suggests that a Martian mission may lighten its launch load considerably by refueling on the moon.Previous studies have...
View ArticleInterplanetary architecture
We are in the midst of a “Mars moment.” This fall, the Matt Damon film, "The Martian," a story about a stranded astronaut who must learn to survive on Mars, grossed a whopping $55 million at the box...
View ArticleGetting real — on Mars
NASA wants you to know that it’s only a matter of months before you can wake up in a Martian habitat, grab some breakfast, jump into your spacesuit, and head out for a stroll across the Red Planet’s...
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Avoiding stumbles, from spacewalks to sidewalks
Video of astronauts tripping over moon rocks can make for entertaining Internet viewing, but falls in space can jeopardize astronauts’ missions and even their lives. Getting to one’s feet in a bulky,...
View ArticleNew technique may help detect Martian life
In 2020, NASA plans to launch a new Mars rover that will be tasked with probing a region of the planet scientists believe could hold remnants of ancient microbial life. The rover will collect samples...
View ArticlePrepping a robot for its journey to Mars
Sarah Hensley is preparing an astronaut named Valkyrie for a mission to Mars. It is 6 feet tall, weighs 300 pounds, and is equipped with an extended chest cavity that makes it look distinctly female....
View ArticleRocket woman
Less than 10 years out of MIT, Shana Diez ’02, SM ’03 had helped design and build a commercial spacecraft that could travel into orbit and ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station. Now...
View ArticleCommercial space: Can we privatize our way to the stars?
The new space race is on. Since the early 2000s, multiple private companies — such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin — have been developing and deploying rockets and other technologies to...
View ArticleMars city living: Designing for the Red Planet
How will people live on Mars? An MIT team developed a design concept addressing this question as part of Mars City Design 2017, an international competition focused on sustainable cities on Mars to be...
View Article3 Questions: Roger Summons on finding organic matter on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has found evidence of complex organic matter preserved in the topmost layers of the Martian surface, scientists report today in the journal Science. While the new results are far...
View ArticleNetworks in aerospace
Along with asteroids, the moon, and the International Space Station, there are hundreds of small, 10-centimeter cubes orbiting planet Earth. Alexa Aguilar, a first-year graduate student in the...
View ArticleInvestigating Earth’s earliest life
In the second grade, Kelsey Moore became acquainted with geologic time. Her teachers instructed the class to unroll a giant strip of felt down a long hallway in the school. Most of the felt was solid...
View ArticleSoftware finds the best way to stick a Mars landing
Selecting a landing site for a rover headed to Mars is a lengthy process that normally involves large committees of scientists and engineers. These committees typically spend several years weighing a...
View ArticleAddressing the possibility of life on Mars
In 2018, millions of people around the world caught glimpses of the planet Mars, discernible as a bright red dot in the summer’s night skies. Every 26 months or so, the red planet reaches a point in...
View ArticleMars 2020 landing site offers unique opportunities
In 2020, NASA’s next rover will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and head to the Jezero Crater on Mars. Jezero was once home to an ancient lake-delta system that scientists...
View ArticleMIT team places second in 2019 NASA BIG Idea Challenge
An MIT student team took second place for its design of a multilevel greenhouse to be used on Mars in NASA’s 2019 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge last month. Each year,...
View ArticleMaria Zuber awarded the Gerard P. Kuiper Prize in Planetary Sciences
The following news is adapted from a press release issued by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society.The American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences...
View ArticleHow to detect life on Mars
When MIT research scientist Christopher Carr visited a green sand beach in Hawaii at the age of 9, he probably didn’t think that he’d use the little olivine crystals beneath his feet to one day search...
View ArticleScientists look to synthetic biology and 3-D printing for life support in space
As NASA gears up to send humans back to the moon or even to Mars, they'll need to figure out how to keep these humans healthy and safe, far away from the resource-abundant Earth.It won't be feasible to...
View ArticlePracticing for a voyage to Mars
If you want to make the long voyage to Mars, you first have to train and rehearse, and MIT alumnus Barret Schlegelmilch SM ’18, MBA ’18 is doing just that. He recently commanded a 45-day practice...
View ArticleInterdisciplinary team takes top prize in Mars colony design competition
Every 75 years, Halley’s Comet makes a triumphant return to the inner solar system, becoming visible to the naked eye from the Earth’s surface as it streaks across the night sky. In 1986, brothers...
View ArticleMars 2020: The search for ancient life is on
Planetary scientists believe that Mars was once warmer, had a significant atmosphere, and maintained abundant flowing water that carved out river channels and pooled in lakes. These conditions would,...
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With Perseverance and a little MOXIE, MIT is going to Mars
On July 30, a two-week window of opportunity opens for Perseverance — the newest Mars rover, forged in the spirit of human curiosity — to begin its journey toward the Red Planet with a launch from the...
View ArticleField geology at a distance
Life is shaped by the environment in which it lives. When looking at an organism today, that relationship can be easily observed. But when all you’re left with is a fossil or rock, it can be tricky to...
View ArticleWith Perseverance, MIT teams prepare for Mars rover landing
On Thursday, NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, is scheduled to touch down on the surface of the Red Planet following a nail-biting entry and descent sequence vividly known as the “seven minutes...
View ArticleAboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, MOXIE creates oxygen on Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover has been marking milestones on Mars since landing on the Red Planet in February. Its latest historic accomplishment is the first creation of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the...
View ArticleTaylor Perron receives 2021 MacArthur Fellowship
Taylor Perron, professor of geology and associate department head for education in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, has been named a recipient of a 2021 MacArthur...
View ArticleRover images confirm Jezero crater is an ancient Martian lake
The first scientific analysis of images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover has now confirmed that Mars’ Jezero crater — which today is a dry, wind-eroded depression — was once a quiet lake, fed...
View ArticleMIT design for Mars propellant production trucks wins NASA competition
Using the latest technologies currently available, it takes over 25,000 tons of rocket hardware and propellant to land 50 tons of anything on the planet Mars. So, for NASA’s first crewed mission to...
View ArticleOn the front lines of space innovation
George Lordos is not your typical graduate student. A degree in economics from Oxford University, an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a 20-year professional career were not the end of...
View ArticleMIT’s MOXIE experiment reliably produces oxygen on Mars
On the red and dusty surface of Mars, nearly 100 million miles from Earth, an instrument the size of a lunchbox is proving it can reliably do the work of a small tree. The MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ...
View ArticleA message to meteorite hunters: Put down your magnets!
Each year, thousands of space rocks pierce through the Earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground as meteorites. These fragments of comets and asteroids can land anywhere but are most often spotted in open...
View ArticleResearchers 3D print a miniature vacuum pump
Mass spectrometers are extremely precise chemical analyzers that have many applications, from evaluating the safety of drinking water to detecting toxins in a patient’s blood. But building an...
View ArticleStudying rivers from worlds away
Rivers have flowed on two other worlds in the solar system besides Earth: Mars, where dry tracks and craters are all that’s left of ancient rivers and lakes, and Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, where...
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Study determines the original orientations of rocks drilled on Mars
As it trundles around an ancient lakebed on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is assembling a one-of-a-kind rock collection. The car-sized explorer is methodically drilling into the Red Planet’s surface...
View ArticleLife on Mars, together
Earlier this year, Madelyn Hoying, a PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, and Wing Lam (Nicole) Chan, an MIT senior in aeronautics and astronautics, were part of...
View ArticleSarah Stewart Johnson, EAPS PhD, gives rein to curiosity
A fling with politics turned into a life-changing career path for Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist and 2008 MIT PhD recipient. A former White House fellow working for the President’s...
View ArticleNASA-JPL director Charles Elachi talks about latest Mars mission
The car-sized Mars rover Curiosity, which landed on the Red Planet last month, is the biggest, most expensive and most ambitious planetary mission in many years. But it is just one of a sweeping...
View ArticleMIT alums recount their Martian experiences
Since NASA’s Curiosity rover made its extraordinary Aug. 6 touchdown on Mars, it has been roving the Martian landscape, returning startling images. So far, the rover has revealed rust-colored canyons...
View ArticleStudy: Rocks from Mars’ Jezero Crater, which likely predate life on Earth,...
In a new study appearing today in the journal AGU Advances, scientists at MIT and NASA report that seven rock samples collected along the “fan front” of Mars’ Jezero Crater contain minerals that are...
View ArticleA wobble from Mars could be sign of dark matter, MIT study finds
In a new study, MIT physicists propose that if most of the dark matter in the universe is made up of microscopic primordial black holes — an idea first proposed in the 1970s — then these gravitational...
View ArticleMars’ missing atmosphere could be hiding in plain sight
Mars wasn’t always the cold desert we see today. There’s increasing evidence that water once flowed on the Red Planet’s surface, billions of years ago. And if there was water, there must also have been...
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