Aeronautics and Astronautics

MIT Professor Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, kicked off an all-female lineup of speakers at TEDxMIT.

CSAIL hosts first-ever TEDxMIT

Speakers — all women — discuss everything from gravitational waves to robot nurses.

May 31, 2019

Residents of MIT's McCormick Hall celebrate the launch of a new craft studio.

For the women of McCormick, a new space in which to create

MIT residence hall opens a craft studio to promote creativity and belonging.

May 31, 2019

Sodium-containing compounds, such as those found in common household ingredients like detergent, baking soda, and table salt, are surprisingly effective ingredients for cooking up carbon nanotubes, new MIT study finds.

Pantry ingredients can help grow carbon nanotubes

Study finds baking soda, detergent, and table salt — all rich in sodium — are effective catalysts.

May 28, 2019

Agata Wiśniowska credits the MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab for helping her land a consulting job. "The NRL gave me my first real work experience, showing me that my decisions can have real weight, and how to take responsibility."

For one graduate student, MIT's nuclear reactor is like a "second home"

On the cusp of graduation, health sciences and technology doctoral candidate Agata Wiśniowska '11 sustains her decade-plus connection to the MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab.

May 23, 2019

To bring more human-like reasoning to autonomous vehicle navigation, MIT researchers have created a system that enables driverless cars to check a simple map and use visual data to follow routes in new, complex environments.

Bringing human-like reasoning to driverless car navigation

Autonomous control system “learns” to use simple maps and image data to navigate new, complex routes.

May 22, 2019

MIT team that designed BEAVER (Biosphere Engineered Architecture for Viable Extraterrestrial Residence), a proposed Martian greenhouse that could provide 100 percent of the food required by four astronauts for up to two years

MIT team places second in 2019 NASA BIG Idea Challenge

Multilevel Mars greenhouse could provide food to sustain astronauts for several years.

May 20, 2019

Acoustic wells chief operating officer Charles-Henri Clerget (sixth from left), chief executive officer Sebastien Mannai SM ’14 PhD ’18 (sixth from right), and chief technology officer Louis Creteur (fifth from right) pose with judges and organizers after winning Wednesday’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Solution for remotely monitoring oil wells wins MIT $100K

MIT startup Acoustic Wells earned the grand prize at the annual entrepreneurship competition.

May 17, 2019

Conceptual image of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, the proposed robotic space cargo carrier and lander for making cargo deliveries to the Moon

MIT, Blue Origin to cooperate on sending research experiment to the moon

MIT community input will help determine the focus of the study to be carried aboard Blue Moon lander.

May 10, 2019

Rana Ezzeddine and Anna Frebel of MIT have observed evidence that the first stars in the universe exploded as asymmetric supernova, strong enough to scatter heavy elements such as zinc across the early universe.

Explosions of universe’s first stars spewed powerful jets

Instead of ballooning into spheres, as once thought, early supernovae ejected jets that may have seeded new stars.

May 8, 2019

In orbit around Earth today there are over 20,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters. Of these, only about 2000 are operational satellites. The remainder are space debris that create a hazard for the useful satellites that provide our global weather, navigation, and communication services.

A sustainability rating for space debris

Teams from the MIT Media Lab, European Space Agency, and World Economic Forum will create a rating system and global standards for space waste mitigation.

May 6, 2019