Writing for Forbes, Prof. David Mindell memorializes the life and work of astronaut Michael Collins, a member of the Apollo 11 crew. “Thanks to Michael Collins, future generations can visit Air and Space, marvel at the Apollo 11 Command Module he piloted, and learn how astronauts pee,” writes Mindell. “Soaring exploration and humble humanity: a fitting legacy for Mike Collins.”
Michael Hecht of MIT’s Haystack Observatory speaks with GBH’s Edgar Herwick about how the MIT-designed MOXIE instrument has successfully extracted oxygen out of Martian air. “I've been using the expression ‘a small breath for man, a giant leap for humankind,'” says Hecht, who served as the PI for MOXIE.
Boston Globe reporter Charlie McKenna spotlights how MOXIE, an MIT-designed instrument onboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, has successfully produced oxygen on Mars. “What’s amazing to me is that this instrument has been through two years of kind of brutal treatment, right? And it’s behaving as if nothing happened, as if we just turned it off and turned it on again right away,” says Michael Hecht of MIT’s Haystack Observatory.
Alumnus Theodore “Teddy” Tzanetos, SB ’12, SM ’13 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Charlie McKenna about the Ingenuity helicopter’s successful first flight on Mars. “It’s a dream come true to be working on this project for all these years and be even more lucky that the whole team is able to see it come to fruition,” says Tzanetos. “We all are hoping this is going to be a stepping stone, a foundation for future missions to come.”
In a conversation with New Scientist reporter Jonathan O’Callaghan, Prof. Tanja Bosak discusses her work with the NASA Perseverance rover’s rock reconnaissance mission. “In the middle of a pandemic, I think we needed something good to happen, and that’s why so many people wanted all the science and engineering that goes into landing a rover on Mars to succeed,” says Bosak. “As for what will happen when the samples come back – I can’t imagine. It’s going to be otherworldly.”
Alumnus David Oh ’91, SM ’93, ScD ’97 speaks with Ars Technica reporter Eric Berger about his work serving as the technical lead for NASA’s Psyche mission, a robotic spacecraft that is set to voyage to a metallic asteroid using a propulsion technology called Hall thrusters. Berger writes that Oh, who worked on Hall thrusters as a graduate student at MIT, is “eager to learn whether Psyche may be the core of something that could have become a planet during the early days of our Solar System but ultimately didn't.”
Alumna Farah Alibay PhD ’14 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Charlie McKenna about her work with the Ingenuity helicopter, an experiment aimed at achieving flight on Mars. “If we are able to demonstrate flight, it could open up possibilities, incredible possibilities for future missions that could be scout helicopters for rovers or science helicopters for exploring Mars,” says Alibay. “It just opens up aerial explorations of Mars, then possibly other planets, too.”
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Washington Post reporter Timothy Bella about the search for exoplanets and the James Webb Telescope. “I just remember seeing the stars and being overwhelmed by the beauty and the vastness and the mysteriousness of it,” recalled Seager, of a camping trip with her father that helped inspire her interest in space. “There’s something almost terrifying about it at the same time as it being so beautiful, because yeah, it’s so unknown, and it seems like it goes on forever.”
Al Chen '00, SM '02, a NASA systems engineer, speaks with NBC Boston about the hidden surprises that NASA engineers hid on the Perseverance rover for NASA fans and science enthusiasts to uncover. “I was at MIT for six years, we loved coding things, Mystery Hunt is a big deal,” says Chen. “I think it's a little bit of a chance to bring the art and the engineering together.”
"We are looking for remnants of past life," says Prof. Tanja Bosak in a discussion broadcast on GBH's Boston Public Radio of the NASA Perseverance rover’s mission on Mars. "There won't be anything that's a complex organism, so everything we have to look for is microscopic. All these rocks tell a story. Depending on their chemical properties and the way they look, we can tell a history and then decide which may have been good to preserve life."
Michael Hecht, associate director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, speaks with Joe Shortsleeve of Bloomberg Radio about the MOXIE experiment onboard the NASA Perseverance rover.
CNN’s Harmeet Kaur spotlights alumna Swati Mohan PhD ’10, who was the guidance and controls operations lead for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission and also served as the mission commentator. Kaur notes that Mohan, who first became intrigued by space while watching Star Trek as a child, was the “eyes and ears” for the historic landing.
Alumna Swati Mohan PhD ’10 served as the mission commentator who confirmed that the NASA Perseverance rover had touched down on Mars last week, reports Mashable. “Mohan led the attitude control system of Mars 2020 during operations, and was the lead systems engineer throughout development. The attitude control system points the vehicle where it needs to be and helps figure out where the spacecraft is oriented in space.”
Speaking with Charlie McKenna of The Boston Globe, Michael Hecht, associate director of MIT’s Haystack Observatory, describes the elation he felt when the NASA Perseverance rover landed on Mars. “I would have expected … just a huge sigh of relief, but no, this was like somebody just scored the winning touchdown on a Hail Mary pass in the Super Bowl,” says Hecht. “It just was time to whoop and holler. It was extraordinary and every part of this was extraordinary.”
USA Today reporter Elinor Aspegren highlights alumna Dr. Swati Mohan, who led guidance, navigation and controls operations for the NASA Perseverance landing on Mars.