NASA

3 Questions: Using fabric to “listen” to space dust

Fabric samples are headed to the International Space Station for resiliency testing; possible applications include cosmic dust detectors or spacesuit smart skins.

November 25, 2020

Versatile building blocks make structures with surprising mechanical properties

The subunits could be robotically assembled to produce large, complex objects, including cars, robots, or wind turbine blades.

November 18, 2020

Xzavier Herbert, a bright star in space math

Math student pursues research at NASA studying connections between classical information theory and quantum information theory.

November 12, 2020

Four maps showing locations of power outages in Florida after Hurricane Matthew

Eight Lincoln Laboratory technologies named 2020 R&D 100 Award winners

Several of the winning innovations apply artificial intelligence to solutions for challenges to national security.

October 20, 2020

Rendering of coronal mass ejection interacting with Earth's atmosphere

MIT-led team to develop software to help forecast space storms

National Science Foundation awards proposal for space weather modeling.

September 10, 2020

This artist’s rendering shows the NASA’s Perseverance rover in action exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars. With MIT’s help, Perseverance will dig deeper into questions about life on the Red Planet than ever before.

With Perseverance and a little MOXIE, MIT is going to Mars

Led by MIT researchers, one of the experiments aboard the next mission to the Red Planet aims to generate oxygen from Martian air.

July 29, 2020

Samples from a rare meteorite family, including the one shown here, reveal that their parent planetesimal, formed in the earliest stages of the solar system, was a complex, layered object, with a molten core and solid crust similar to Earth.

An origin story for a family of oddball meteorites

Study suggests the rare objects likely came from an early planetesimal with a magnetic core.

July 24, 2020

Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere watched a black hole’s corona disappear, then reappear, for first time. A colliding star may have triggered the drastic transformation.

In a first, astronomers watch a black hole’s corona disappear, then reappear

A colliding star may have triggered the drastic transformation.

July 15, 2020

In our solar system, the “ice giants” Neptune and Uranus are far less dense than rocky Venus and Earth. But astrophysicists on NASA’s TESS mission have now found an exoplanet, TOI-849b, that appears to be 40 times more massive than Earth, yet just as dense. This illustration depicts the exoplanet, UCF-1.01. Like TOI-849b, this exoplanet also orbits close to a star and is like “hot Neptune....

TESS mission discovers massive ice giant

Neptune-sized planet may be remnant core of a much larger planet.

July 1, 2020

A surging glacier in the St. Elias Mountains, Canada.

Tiny sand grains trigger massive glacial surges

New model answers longstanding question of how these sudden flows happen; may expand understanding of Antarctic ice sheets.

June 12, 2020

Researchers at MIT, the University of Oklahoma, and elsewhere, with the help of citizen scientists, have identified a brown dwarf with a disk that is the youngest of its kind within about 100 parsecs of Earth. The brown dwarf, named W1200-7845 and depicted in this image, appears to have the kind of disk that could form planets.

Citizen scientists spot closest young brown dwarf disk yet

Discovery made through the Disk Detective project could help the search for new planets.

June 2, 2020

MIT researchers find that extratropical storm tracks — the blue regions of storminess in the Earth's middle latitudes — would change significantly with solar geoengineering efforts.

Study: Reflecting sunlight to cool the planet will cause other global changes

Solar geoengineering proposals will weaken extratropical storm tracks in both hemispheres, scientists find.

June 2, 2020

A machine-learning technique developed at MIT combs through global ocean data to find commonalities between marine locations, based on interactions between phytoplankton species. Using this approach, researchers have determined that the ocean can be split into over 100 types of “provinces,” and 12 “megaprovinces,” that are distinct in their ecological makeup.

Machine learning helps map global ocean communities

An MIT-developed technique could aid in tracking the ocean’s health and productivity.

May 29, 2020

MIT researchers have discovered a phenomenon that could be harnessed to control the movement of tiny particles floating in suspension. This approach, which requires simply applying an external electrical field, may ultimately lead to new ways of performing certain industrial or medical processes that require separation of tiny suspended materials.

Study finds electrical fields can throw a curveball

Particle-scale phenomenon akin to the swerving of a curveball could allow selective separation of suspended nanomaterials.

May 26, 2020

To ensure the best coverage of our solar system, MIT Assistant Professor Richard Linares envisions a constellation of "statites" that communicate and work together, only activating the statite in the optimum position to fly by or rendezvous with an interstellar object successfully. Other statites in the constellation can continue to wait for the next ISO to appear.

To catch an interstellar visitor, use a solar-powered space slingshot

MIT research proposal for rendezvous missions with interstellar objects selected for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Program.

May 6, 2020

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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