Spaceflight Insider

News Archive / Tagged: MIT

  • SOFIA data sheds new light on endurance of Pluto’s atmosphere

    Laurel KornfeldJune 1st, 2020

    Data captured by the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), an airborne observatory that studied Pluto’s atmospheric hazes just two weeks before New Horizons‘ 2015 flyby, indicates the hazes in Pluto’s atmosphere are regularly replenished.

  • MIT students studying mission to asteroid Apophis

    Bart LeahyJune 10th, 2017

    Apophis, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier, will make a close approach to Earth in 2029. It will come within approximately 18,300 miles (29,500 kilometers), less than one-tenth the distance from Earth to the Moon. A group of students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is designing a mission to study the asteroid up close as it passes by.

  • NASA counting on humanoid robots for deep space exploration

    Tomasz NowakowskiJanuary 26th, 2016

    As NASA moves out into space, it will need to prepare for harsh environments such as those crews to Mars would encounter. Having operational robots help assist in tasks could be critical during missions beyond Earth. NASA is considering this matter and it could usher in a new age of humanoid robots.

  • Will NASA’s TESS spacecraft revolutionize exoplanet hunting?

    Tomasz NowakowskiJanuary 29th, 2015

    NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS ), planned to be launched in August 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets. Led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), TESS will focus on stars 30-100 times brighter than those surveyed by […]

  • OPINION: Mars One should take MIT’s disturbing report seriously

    Collin SkocikOctober 19th, 2014

    On May 11, 2014, Spaceflight Insider discussed Mars One, an ambitious plan to send a one-way mission to colonize the Red Planet. Four volunteers will travel on the first mission, slated to take place in 2024, followed by subsequent missions to expand the fledgling colony. But a disturbing computer simulation by students at MIT indicates that the Mars […]

  • NASA names David W. Miller as agency’s new chief technologist

    Press ReleaseMarch 13th, 2014

    NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Thursday that David W. Miller, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., has been named the agency’s new Chief Technologist. As chief technologist, he will be Bolden’s principal advisor and advocate on matters concerning agency-wide technology policy and programs.