Aeronautical and astronautical engineering

Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with Science Friday guest host Sophie Bushwick about the importance of space law and the rules of space. “One of the things that is so helpful to think about when trying to define space law is the fact that space law, in many ways, happens at the national level and is negotiated at the international level, so we can say that the United States has both ratified and signed the outer space treaty which means it is also U.S law,” explains Wood. “I think that’s really key to keeping track of what it means for international law to be binding and I think that’s key to saying space law is meaningful especially because countries make it domestic law.”

Prof. Danielle Wood speaks with Science news intern Sean Cummings about how space exploration and research can benefit everyone. “It’s great to think about what it means for space to benefit everyone,” says Wood. “I think there are two dimensions to ask: I would first ask ‘how could I redesign space systems that were not designed for everyone but could be fixed to make them more effective?’ and the second would be ‘what about the new things we haven’t built yet?’”

Prof. Paulo Lozano speaks with Kaity Kline of NPR’s Morning Edition about the space stations of the future and how NASA collaborating with private companies on the development of the next iteration of the International Space Station could spur new technological advancements. “Once you have entrepreneurship and you have a commercial interest, that accelerates technology development,” says Lozano. 

Prof. Arnold Barnett speaks with CNN reporter Jacopo Prisco about his forthcoming study examining the safety of air travel. “The main takeaway is that in the period between 2018 and 2022, the worldwide death risk per boarding was one in 13.4 million,” writes Prisco. “That means that if you picked a flight completely at random and just took it, your chance of dying in a plane crash or a terrorist act was about one in 13 million.”

Prof. Julie Shah speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Weber about the implementation of automation in the work force. According to Shah, “when companies adopt automation successfully, they end up adding workers as they become more productive and fill more orders,” writes Weber. “And machines’ lack of flexibility has often resulted in what Shah calls ‘zero-sum automation,’ where gains in productivity are canceled out by the need for people to fix or reprogram robots and compensate for their drawbacks.” 

MIT researchers are working to uncover new ways to avoid contrails and minimize their impact on global warming, reports Nicolas Rivero for The Washington Post. “Whether [the contrail impact is] exactly 20 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent, I don’t think anybody knows that answer, really,” says research scientist Florian Allroggen “But it also doesn’t really matter. It’s a big contributor and we need to worry about it.”

Gizmodo reporter George Dvorsky spotlights the Venus Life Finder mission, developed by researchers from MIT and Rocket Lab, which will be launching no earlier than December 2024. “The mission will send a small probe, equipped with a single science instrument, to analyze organic molecules and potential signs of life in the Venusian atmosphere,” writes Dvorsky.

Ariel Ekblaw, director of the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, speaks with Wired reporter Ramin Skibba on a panel discussion on the future of space exploration. “In the future, instead of thinking about space habitats and life in space as a domain where it’s just about survival, which it has certainly been until recently, we’re at this inflection point,” says Ekblaw. “We can begin to think about thriving in space, designing space architecture that is welcoming to more of the public that doesn’t just look like a science lab on orbit and so to be able to do that, we need responsive space habitats, really capable integration of all kinds of different systems, and AI will have a huge role in that.”

Bloomberg reporter Magdalena del Valle spotlights Regent, an all-electric sea glider startup founded by alumni Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker. Regent is combining electric propulsion and hydrofoils to, “offer a carbon-free alternative for overwater routes such as New York to Boston, Los Angeles to San Diego, or Miami to the Bahamas,” writes del Valle.

Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues have discovered “a six-pack of planets, formed at least 4 billion years ago,” that orbit a nearby sun-like star named HD110067, reports Joel Achenbach for The Washington Post. “Occasionally, nature reveals an absolute gem,” says Seager. “HD 110067 is an immediate astronomical Rosetta stone – offering a key system to help unlock some mysteries of planet formation and evolution.”

Dr. Dara Norman '88, incoming president of the American Astronomical Society, speaks with Swapna Krishna at Wired about data access, scientific merit and her time at MIT. “During one key moment, as an undergraduate at MIT, she looked through a telescope during a class and saw Jupiter for the first time,” writes Krishna. “It was just amazing. It looked like all the pictures, and I was hooked,” says Norman.

Regent, a company co-founded by alumni Billy Thalheimer and Michael Klinker, has developed an all-electric sea glider, a low flying plane that operates only over water, reports Alan Ohnsman for Forbes. “We’ve seen airlines and the aviation field pick up a lot,” says Thalheimer. “We're starting to see airlines really think of themselves as transportation operators, thinking about that whole end-to-end customer journey. And seagliders can fit really nicely into that picture.”

Prof. Russ Tedrake and Max Bajracharya '21 MEng '21 speak with TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater about the impact of generative AI on the future of robotics. “Generative AI has the potential to bring revolutionary new capabilities to robotics,” says Tedrake. “Not only are we able to communicate with robots in natural language, but connecting to internet-scale language and image data is giving robots a much more robust understanding and reasoning about the world.”

A number of MIT spinouts and research projects – including the MOXIE instrument that successfully generated oxygen on Mars, a new solar-powered desalination system and MIT spinout SurgiBox – were featured on TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023 list.

MIT researchers are leading three missions over the next decade to characterize Venus’ atmosphere for habitability, reports Bruce Dorminey for Forbes. “Understanding Venus is key to understanding exo-earths,” writes Dorminey.