NASA

MIT alumna Shana Diez is putting her two aerospace engineering degrees to work at SpaceX in California. “LA is the most exciting place in the world for aerospace innovation,” she says.

Rocket woman

An LA-area alumna is on board for the new space race.

February 6, 2017

MIT grad student Joy Buolamwini (left) meets author Margot Lee Shetterly at an MIT screening of "Hidden Figures."

Joy Buolamwini wins national contest for her work fighting bias in machine learning

Media Lab graduate student selected from over 7,300 entrants, awarded $50,000 scholarship in contest inspired by the film "Hidden Figures."

January 17, 2017

The SMAP observations are providing an unprecedented level of detailed, worldwide information on the amount of water in the top 2 inches (5 centimeters) of soil, collected globally every two to three days.

Study tracks “memory” of soil moisture

First year of data from SMAP satellite provides new insights for weather, agriculture, and climate.

January 16, 2017

C. Adam Schlosser, MIT research scientist and Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change deputy director

Modeling plausible futures

MIT research scientist C. Adam Schlosser assesses long-term risks to regional water and energy systems.

January 10, 2017

Researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds — greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades — can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere.

Short-lived greenhouse gases cause centuries of sea-level rise

Through warming effects, methane and other gases impact rising seas long after leaving the atmosphere.

January 9, 2017

Left: An artist’s conception of the Lucy spacecraft flying by the Trojan Eurybates — one of the six diverse and scientifically important Trojans asteroids to be studied. Right: Psyche, the first mission to a metal asteroid, will map features, structure, composition, and magnetic field, and examine a landscape unlike anything explored before.

Twin wins for planetary exploration

MIT scientists and alumni well represented on newly announced NASA asteroid missions Psyche and Lucy.

January 5, 2017

MIT scientists have found that extreme precipitation events in California should become more frequent as the Earth’s climate warms over this century.

Study finds more extreme storms ahead for California

New technique predicts frequency of heavy precipitation with global warming.

January 3, 2017

"Hidden Figures" author and producer Margot Lee Shetterly fields a question at the MIT pre-release screening of the film based on her book. MIT Museum Director of Collections Deborah Douglas (left) and Institute Professor Sheila Widnall were also on the post-screening discussion panel.

"Hidden Figures" screening, discussion addresses the history of black women at NASA

Author and executive producer Margot Lee Shetterly explores inspiration for the film; MIT guest speakers provide additional historical context.

December 22, 2016

Apollo code developer Margaret Hamilton receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

Former School of Engineering and Lincoln Laboratory computing pioneer among 21 recipients of the nation’s highest civilian honor.

November 17, 2016

NASA’s New Horizons team has found evidence of any icy, slushy ocean beneath Pluto’s “heart."

Pluto’s icy, slushy heart

Data from New Horizons mission suggest a water-ice ocean lies beneath Pluto’s heart-shaped basin.

November 16, 2016

A newly developed wing architecture could greatly simplify the manufacturing process and reduce fuel consumption by improving the wing’s aerodynamics. It is based on a system of tiny, lightweight subunits that could be assembled by a team of small specialized robots, and could ultimately be used to build the entire airframe.

A new twist on airplane wing design

“Morphing” wing could enable more efficient plane manufacturing and flight.

November 3, 2016

This image shows free-air gravitational anomalies and a shaded topographic relief of the Moon’s 930-km-diameter Orientale impact basin. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue to mass deficits relative to a reference value. This gravitational field model, based on measurements acquired from the NASA GRAIL mission, shows the detailed structure of the central basin depression that is filled with...

Retracing the origins of a massive, multi-ring crater

Scientists reconstruct first hours after a giant impact created one of the largest craters on the moon.

October 27, 2016

“One thing you realize working in this lab is that we are really far away from the robot apocalypse,” says MIT senior Sarah Hensley, who is working with a team of researchers to prepare Valkyrie, a humanoid robot, for future space missions.

Prepping a robot for its journey to Mars

Senior Sarah Hensley aims to improve Earth's most advanced humanoid robot, in advance of its trip to the Red Planet.

October 18, 2016

This artist's depiction shows the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft contacting the asteroid Bennu with its Touch-And-Go Sample Arm. The mission aims to return a sample of Bennu's surface coating to Earth and to return detailed information about the asteroid and its trajectory.

MIT’s REXIS is bound for asteroid Bennu

Instrument will help OSIRIS-REx mission identify locations for collecting an asteroid sample.

September 8, 2016

Michael Floyd, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says that in developing seismic hazard assessments, it’s important to consider afterslip and slowly creeping faults, which occur often and over long periods of time following the more obvious earthquake.

2014 Napa earthquake continued to creep, weeks after main shock

Continuing seismic activity could pose additional hazards to infrastructure.

August 19, 2016

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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