Aeronautics and Astronautics

Scott Nill and Larissa Nietner at MIT Commencement in June 2018, just after their wedding and honeymoon.

Finding love in the lab

Mechanical engineering alumni and married couple Larissa Nietner and Scott Nill started their relationship — and two companies — as MIT graduate students.

February 13, 2019

According to Hamsa Balakrishnan, associate head of the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, “When our students go out knowing where the state-of-the-art is in both the transportation domain and the technical disciplines, they are empowered to advance knowledge and have a practical impact.”

3Q: Hamsa Balakrishnan on reimagining the future of transportation

MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics describes the seamless flow of people, things, and materials.

February 11, 2019

Left to right: Jessica Zhu, Stewart Isaacs, and Casey Evans

Three graduate students named 2019 Aviation Week “20 Twenties”

Casey Evans, Stewart Isaacs, and Jessica Zhu are honored for outstanding academic performance, civic contributions, and research.

February 8, 2019

About 130 undergraduates discussed the progress of their yearlong research projects at during the SuperUROP Showcase poster session.

SuperUROP: Showcasing students' research work in progress

Undergraduate researchers discussed their projects at a well-attended poster session.

January 31, 2019

As drones increasingly take on the job of inspecting growing solar farms, Raptor Maps' software makes sense of the data they collect.

Optimizing solar farms with smart drones

MIT spinoff Raptor Maps uses machine-learning software to improve the maintenance of solar panels.

January 30, 2019

MIT engineers have now developed an algorithm that lets autonomous underwater vehicles weigh the risks and potential rewards of exploring an unknown region.

Engineers program marine robots to take calculated risks

Algorithm could help autonomous underwater vehicles explore risky but scientifically-rewarding environments.

January 30, 2019

This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 PolyCam images collected on Dec. 2 by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 15 miles (24 km). The image was obtained at a 50 degree phase angle between the spacecraft, asteroid, and the sun.

MIT’s REXIS and Bennu’s watery surface

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return spacecraft, carrying MIT instrument, arrived at asteroid in December; now begins the science to select a sampling location.

January 29, 2019

Using a new cooperative learning technique, MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers cut by half the time it took a pair of robot agents to learn to maneuver to opposite sides of a virtual room.

Learning to teach to speed up learning

An algorithm that teaches robot agents how to exchange advice to complete a task helps them learn faster.

January 29, 2019

A model by MIT and Microsoft researchers identifies instances where autonomous systems have “learned” from training examples that don’t match what’s actually happening in the real world, which can be used to identify which learned actions could cause costly errors.

Identifying artificial intelligence “blind spots”

Model identifies instances when autonomous systems have learned from examples that may cause dangerous errors in the real world.

January 24, 2019

The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on Jan. 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. The left image was taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager. At right, color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image.

3Q: On the significance of Ultima Thule

New Horizons Mission Team members Alissa Earle and Richard Binzel discuss the revelations the icy world provides about the formation of our solar system.

January 23, 2019

First row, left to right: Suvrit Sra, Frances Ross, Pulkit Agrawal, Kevin O’Brien, Richard Linares, and Cathy Wu. Second row, left to right: Negar Reiskarimian, Jacob Andreas, Giovanni Traverso, Manya Ghobadi, and Ashwin Gopinath.

School of Engineering welcomes new faculty

Eleven new professors join the MIT community.

January 9, 2019

In the coming decades, massive segmented space telescopes may be launched to peer even closer in on far-out exoplanets and their atmospheres. To keep these mega-scopes stable, MIT researchers say that small satellites can follow along, and act as “guide stars,” by pointing a laser back at a telescope to calibrate the system, to produce better, more accurate images of distant worlds.

Tiny satellites could be “guide stars” for huge next-generation telescopes

Researchers design CubeSats with lasers to provide steady reference light for telescopes investigating distant planets.

January 4, 2019

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (right), an associate professor of physics at MIT, was honored with Physics World's Breakthrough of the Year for his group's discovery of “magic-angle” graphene, a “promising technique for adjusting the electronic properties of graphene.” Graduate student Yuan Cao (left) was a lead researcher in the work.

MIT research honored with Physics World “Breakthrough of the Year” awards

"Magic-angle" graphene named 2018 Breakthrough of the Year; first ionic plane and earliest evidence of hydrogen gas named to top 10 breakthroughs.

December 27, 2018

A new laser-pointing platform developed at MIT may help launch miniature satellites called CubeSats into the high-rate data game.

Laser-pointing system could help tiny satellites transmit data to Earth

Platform offers the precision that shoebox-sized CubeSats need to beam down hefty data packets.

December 14, 2018

“If I want to be successful in my other endeavors or in my student groups, in my studies, it’s important that I continue to jump rope throughout my life to stay physically and mentally healthy,” says Stewart Isaacs, a PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics.

Jumping through life and his passions at MIT

Stewart Isaacs, a PhD student in AeroAstro and a world champion jump roper, credits his academic successes to his long career in competitive jump roping.

November 22, 2018

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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