MIT 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...
View ArticleFor all humankind
Can a government promote morality? How much trust should people place in their government?Such fundamental questions of political philosophy and ethics intrigue Leela Fredlund, a senior majoring in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View Article