Chris Cassidy SM ’00, who “flew three space missions, commanded the International Space Station, and earned multiple combat awards for his service in Afghanistan,” moderated the USS Constitution Museum's Leadership Forum on Oct. 8, reports WCVB 5. “Cassidy served as NASA’s Chief Astronaut, accumulating 378 days in space, more than 54 hours across 10 spacewalks.”
In an interview with Smithsonian Magazine’s Diane Tedeschi, alumnus Mike Massimino SM ’88, PhD ’92 discusses working on NASA’s space shuttle as a mission specialist and repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. “Nothing can really prepare you, though, for the overwhelming beauty that you see—the emotion of it [space],” says Massimino. “When you see the beauty of Earth and the stars and the Moon and everything around you, it’s so inspiring. But as far as your job goes, you’re 100-percent ready.”
MassLive’s Liesel Nygard spotlights the late Margaret Hamilton, “a pioneering computer scientist who helped establish the field of software engineering and led the MIT team that developed the onboard flight software for NASA’s Apollo moon missions.” Nygard writes, “Thanks to priority-driven ‘defensive’ software [in the lunar module’s computers] engineered by Hamilton and her team, the system automatically shut down unnecessary background tasks to focus on the landing, avoiding an emergency abort [of the Apollo 11 mission].”
The Washington Post’s Juno Carmel details how the late Margaret Hamilton “developed early computer software that helped pave the way for the digital world as we know it today” and led the team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab that programmed the alarm code that played a crucial role in the Apollo 11 mission. Hamilton “was the lead developer for the software that powered the Apollo guidance computer, which weighed 70 pounds but had only 72 kilobytes of memory, a fraction of today’s smartphones,” notes Carmel.
Margaret Hamilton, “best known for her major contributions to the Apollo missions” at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab, “died on Sept. 30 at age 90, leaving behind a trailblazing legacy of problem-solving and entrepreneurship that paved the way for a new branch of computer science and engineering,” writes reporter Margherita Bassi for Smithsonian Magazine. Hamilton’s “coding foresight and prowess really made that mission a success,” says Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Andrew Meade McGee. “She created the logical software basis for many of the critical systems we use to maintain our infrastructure today, and that silently power today’s modern aerospace world.”
Margaret Hamilton, who developed the software that helped the Apollo 11 mission land safely on the moon and “whose historic accomplishments focused attention on the work of software engineers,” died on Sept. 30, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “She gave me, from the get-go, this notion that I could do anything, that there were absolutely no gender barriers,” says Hamilton’s daughter, Lauren. Hamilton’s life and work conveyed to her great-granddaughters “that very clear idea that they could have whatever future they wanted to create for themselves.”
For The New York Times, reporters Carolyn Y. Johnson and Kenneth Chang spotlight the late computer scientist Margaret Hamilton and her role in the development of the field of software engineering, highlighting her work as a “trailblazing woman who played a crucial, largely unseen role.” MIT Presidential Advisor Maria Zuber shared: “When you see someone like her who went for it and lived her dream it makes it a little easier for the rest of us to dare to reach for the moon as well.”
“Groundbreaking researcher,” Margaret Hamilton, “whose code helped land NASA’s Apollo astronauts on the moon to win the 20th-century space race has died,” reports CNN’s Jackie Wattles. “Through her work, Hamilton is also credited as one of the founders of the field of software engineering — a term she coined — by helping to establish it as a professional practice,” writes Wattles.
The Guardian’s Uwa Ede-Osifo spotlights the life and legacy of the late Margaret Hamilton, “the computer pioneer whose software powered the first moon landing,” at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab. Prior to the Instrumentation Lab, Hamilton worked “on the software that could detect enemy aircraft,” at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory,” writes Ede-Osifo. “When the institute received a Nasa contract to develop the Apollo onboard flight software, she jumped at the opportunity.”
Margaret Hamilton, “who led the 100-person team [at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab] that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon,” died on Sept. 30, reports Trip Gabriel for The New York Times. “Her skills led to her promotion to director of software engineering on the project, which developed the two 70-pound onboard computers for the Apollo flights: one in the command module, which carried the astronauts from Earth, and the second in the lunar module, which set down on the moon’s surface,” writes Gabriel.
Prof. Dennis Whyte joins Hakeem Oluseyi, host of GBH’s “Particles of Thought,” to “explore fusion's wildest applications” in space. “There are private companies now looking at ways to exploit fusion for space travel,” says Whyte. “There are also, simultaneously, companies which are looking at using the technology of fusion—particularly the plasma and magnetic technology, which were primarily developed from fusion to get significant improvements in propulsion technology as well.”
MIT researchers have found that the gravitational pull of a red dwarf star is “siphoning material” from a brown dwarf star 300 to 500 light-years from Earth, writes reporter Will Dunham for Reuters. “This is the first observed example of this phenomenon,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “The two objects are so close together that the entire orbit would fit inside the sun.”
MIT astronomers have discovered a “star slowly and steadily consuming material from another low-mass object,” writes Catherine Stoddard for Fox News. “At the rate which the star is feeding, it’ll take likely hundreds of thousands, or maybe even billions of years for it to completely consume its nearby neighbor,” notes Stoddard.
MIT researchers have discovered “a red dwarf [star] slowly and steadily consuming its orbital object, a brown dwarf [star],” in a process that could continue for millions of years, writes reporter Mary Randolph for the Scientific American. The discovery was “a happy accident,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “We’re excited to see if we can find a star eating a planet or maybe even two planets eating each other—different types of combinations of these objects.”
Prof. R. Scott Kemp speaks to The New York Times’ Selam Gebrekidan about the U.S. planning to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. Kemp “said accidents were more probable on the moon,” writes Gebrekidan. “With little containment, even smaller accidents would produce much more radioactive fallout. There is no wind on the moon but, with less gravity, debris can travel far after an explosion.”