Aeronautics and Astronautics

The first MPP2030 conference was held in Lisbon earlier this month.

MIT Portugal collaboration enters new phase

MPP2030 is focused on education, research, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

October 26, 2018

School of Engineering third quarter 2018 awards

Faculty members recognized for excellence via a diverse array of honors, grants, and prizes over the last quarter.

October 19, 2018

“After so many years of telling people MIT is my dream school, all my hard work has paid off,” Catlina Romero says.

Keeping confidence

The Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) program helped Catalina Romero understand that she wasn’t alone on her MIT journey.

October 10, 2018

This device, known as the PowerWalk, harvests kinetic energy. It may reduce the number of batteries a soldier needs to carry, potentially lightening the load and freeing up space in backpacks for other supplies, including food and water.

Movement-enhancing exoskeletons may impair decision making

In lab experiments, soldiers wearing exoskeletons designed to improve physical performance reacted more slowly to visual cues.

October 4, 2018

Angela Crews, a PhD candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, coauthored a study comparing weather data collected by low-cost, shoebox-size satellites with that gathered by much larger, more expensive traditional weather satellite.

For collecting weather data, tiny satellites measure up to billion-dollar cousins

Study finds shoebox-sized CubeSats gather weather data comparably to data collected by larger satellites.

September 27, 2018

A self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.

Software finds the best way to stick a Mars landing

Program users can tinker with landing and path planning scenarios to identify optimal landing sites for Mars rovers.

September 26, 2018

Sheila Widnall, MIT Institute Professor and former secretary of the U.S. Air Force

3Q: Sheila Widnall on sexual harassment in STEM

National Academies report cites need for strong leadership and cultural change; will be focus of upcoming MIT panel discussion.

September 17, 2018

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics grad students Sebastien Mannai (left) and Antoni Rosinol Vidal won the FutureMakers Challenge first prize by demonstrating the utility of machine vision and signal processing in a complex mechanical engineering system.

Sebastien Mannai, Antoni Rosinol Vidal win FutureMakers first prize

AeroAstro grad students win multi-university challenge by demonstrating the utility of machine vision in a complex system.

September 4, 2018

Members of the ASTERIA team prepare the petite satellite for its journey to space.

Tiny ASTERIA satellite achieves a first for CubeSats

Measurement of an exoplanet transit demonstrates proof of concept that small spacecraft can perform high-precision photometry.

August 15, 2018

High school students (l-r) Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner, and Bria Snell, whose water purification system won them second place in a NASA technology competition, got a tour of the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel as part of their visit to MIT. The visit was sponsored by AeroAfro, an organization of MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics students.

NASA student competitors honored for persistence

MIT student group welcomes an all-black, all-female team who had been targeted by racist and misogynistic members of an infamous online forum.

August 14, 2018

Students in the Beaver Works Summer Institute’s Autonomous RACECAR course follow their cars around a racetrack during the program’s final race.

A transformative summer for student engineers

High school students explored engineering and technology at the Beaver Works Summer Institute, ending with robot races and demonstrations.

August 13, 2018

The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command views a shift to model-based systems engineering as an essential step in shortening and modernizing its abilities to deliver high-quality, state-of-the-art programs. Pictured here is Cmdr. Cynthia Dieterly, commanding officer of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 115 conducts pre-flight checks on an E-2C Hawkeye prior to launch from the Nimitz-class aircraft...

Transforming the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, with thanks to MIT

NAVAIR is upgrading its acquisition capabilities using an MIT online course in model-based systems engineering.

August 6, 2018

Featured video: If the spacesuit fits

PhD student Richard Fineman is using wearable sensors to understand coordination and walking — and next-generation spacesuit design.

July 31, 2018

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics head Jaime Peraire calls Rebecca Masterson “an outstanding researcher with an impressive record of accomplishment in space systems engineering and design.”

Rebecca Masterson appointed AeroAstro principal research scientist

Mechanical engineer and instrument scientist on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is the first female principal research scientist in the department's history.

July 19, 2018

School of Engineering second quarter 2018 awards