NASA

MIT scientists have found that the Australian wildfires in 2019 and 2020 unleashed remnants of chlorine-containing molecules in the stratosphere, expanding the ozone hole and suggesting that more frequent wildfires could threaten the ozone hole’s recovery, reports Dyani Lewis for Nature. “It’s like a race,” says Prof. Susan Solomon. “Does the chlorine decay out of the stratosphere fast enough in the next, say, 40–50 years that the likely increase in intense and frequent wildfires doesn’t end up prolonging the ozone hole?”

Stephen Bowen MS ’93 and Warren Hoburg BS ’08 have joined the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), reports Susannah Sudborough for Boston.com.  During their six-month period aboard the ISS, which began on March 2, “they will conduct over 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations,” writes Sudborough.

Daily Beast reporter Meredith Bagby spotlights the life of Ron McNair PhD ’76 and his legacy as one of NASA’s first black astronauts. “Astronaut, saxophonist, and karate black belt Ron McNair overcame an impoverished childhood in segregated Lake City, South Carolina to earn a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and become one of NASA’s first Black astronauts,” writes Bagby. “Although Ron’s path to NASA was nearly derailed because of systematic racism and inequality, he found inspiration in the Black leaders around him and persevered.”

Ronald McNair PhD ’76 was a part of NASA’s class of 1978, which was the first group of astronauts to include women, people of color, and scientists, reports Alexandra Witze for Nature. The class of 1978 “was a time of huge change for NASA,” writes Witze. “It was time for a new type of astronaut for a new type of spaceship.”

Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues write for Physics Today about how the SpaceX Starship could help transform astrophysics missions. “Assuming it is successful, Starship will dramatically enhance our space capabilities in ways that will qualitatively alter how astrophysics missions can be built,” write Seager and her colleagues.

Research scientist Mary Knapp and her collaborators are working on a concept for The Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths (Go-LoW), a space-based observatory comprised of small satellites aimed at making low-frequency radio waves visible, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “I learned back in my undergrad days that there was this part of the spectrum we couldn’t see,” Knapp explains. “It really just struck me that there was this unexplored part of the universe, and I want to explore this part of the sky for the first time.”

Prof. Steven Barrett speaks with New York Times reporter Paige McClanahan about the pressing need to make air travel more sustainable and his research exploring the impact of contrails on the planet’s temperature. “Eliminating contrails is quite a big lever on mitigating the climate impact of aviation,” said Barrett.

Research Scientist Mary Knapp’s proposal for a Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths (GO-LoW), a space-based observatory consisting of thousands of satellites that could study the magnetic fields of distant and rocky exoplanets, has been selected for NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts programs, writes George Dvorsky for Gizmodo.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station completed an experiment to test a system developed by researchers from MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative that would allow astronauts to build parts in space, reports Pranshu Verma for The Washington Post. The new system could allow astronauts to build and modify space stations “quicker, cheaper and with less complexity,” explains Ariel Ekblaw, director and founder of the Space Exploration Initiative. “It starts to unlock more opportunities for exploration.”

MIT researchers developed a new system to build gravity-defying spare parts in space that is currently being tested aboard the International Space Station, reports Rahul Rao for Popular Science. “The MIT group’s process involves taking a flexible silicone skin, shaped like the part it will eventually create, and filling it with a liquid resin,” writes Rao. “These are going to be our first results for a really novel process in microgravity,” explains Ariel Ekblaw SM ’17, PhD ’20, director of the Space Exploration Initiative.

A team of MIT students developed reconfigurable robots capable of exploring rough terrains on the moon as part of NASA's Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, reports Alejandra Borunda for National Geographic. The MIT students “figured that once astronauts were on the moon, they’d want to use various types of robots so they designed “‘Lego-like combinations that can be reconfigured,’” the team explained.

Prof. Paulo Lozano speaks with Scientific American reporter Nadia Drake about the CubeSats NASA tested during the Artemis I mission. “There are not that many opportunities to actually go to deep space with CubeSats, so having more of those opportunities available—I think it’s a great thing for little satellites,” Lozano says. “I think there’s going to be a lot of things to be learned about how to design these spacecraft so that, in the future, we can design little spacecraft that can accomplish what big spacecraft can achieve.”

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, postdoc Rohan Naidu and his colleagues discovered a candidate galaxy in the early universe that is one of two candidate galaxies older than any others known before, reports Jonathan O'Callaghan for Scientific American.

Prof. Neil Gershenfeld and graduate student Amira Abdel-Rahma speak with BBC Digital Planet reporters Gareth Mitchell and Ghislaine Boddington about their research developing tiny robots that can assemble themselves into structures, vehicles or even larger robots. “The main objective of this research is the robot can have a few choices,” says Abdel-Rahma. “First it can build the structure, the second choice is it could self-replicate or clone… the third, it could evolve and build a bigger robot.”

Paul Best reports for Fox Business on how MIT researchers are developing tiny robots with built-in intelligence that can allow them to assemble into structures, vehicles or even larger robots.