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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 celebrates 50th anniversary of historic moon landing
On Sept. 12, 1962, in a speech given in Houston to pump up support for NASA’s Apollo program, President John F. Kennedy shook a stadium crowd with the now-famous quote: “We choose to go to the moon in...
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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