Prof. Emeritus Kerry Emanuel speaks with Jeff Martin at the Associated Press about the potential influence of the supermoon on Hurricane Idalia. “When the moon is full, the sun and the moon are pulling in the same direction, which has the effect of increasing tides above normal ranges” says Emanuel.
Researchers from the MIT Space Exploration Initiative are sending two payloads to the moon with Lunar Outpost, a space technology company, reports Arianna Johnson for Forbes. “The Resource camera will generate 3-3 images of different lunar points of interest,” writes Johnson. “The second payload is the AstroAnt, a miniature rover the size of a matchbox that will drive atop the MAPP rover and take contactless measurements of the rover’s radiator.”
Prof. Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab, speaks with Los Angeles Times reporter Samantha Masunaga about the delay of the Artemis 1 moon mission. “We don’t take chances, especially on such a huge, powerful rocket,” said Newman, a former NASA deputy administrator. “Everything has to work perfectly.”
Prof. Paulo Lozano speaks with CBS Boston about the Artemis 1 moon mission and the reasons behind the recent launch delays. "It's very exciting because the last time we were on the moon was during the Apollo years and we didn't stay. Our current generation has just a vague memory of that," says Lozano. "All we learn by going to the moon we can apply to go to other places in the solar system."
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.”
CBS News reporter Sophie Lewis spotlights NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli '05 and Kate Rubins, a former researcher at MIT’s Whitehead Institute, noting that they are training for the upcoming Artemis missions, which will "send the first woman to walk on the moon."
Writing for Astronomy, Korey Haynes features Saydean Zeldin’s work at the MIT Instrumentation Lab designing software that allowed the Apollo astronauts to control the spacecraft engines. Haynes notes that Zeldin has had “a major hand in the way technology works today.”
Writing for Astronomy, Korey Haynes spotlights Elaine Denniston, who was hired as a keypuncher at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, but went above and beyond, reviewing the Apollo code for errors. Denniston, who went on to become a lawyer, says that she “didn’t realize then that what I did was anything special. I typed, I found errors, I nagged people.”
Prof. Dava Newman speaks with WBUR’s Sharon Brody about the impact of the Apollo program on her own career and on humanity at large. Newman, who notes that the success of the Apollo 11 mission, “taught her to dream,” notes that, “if you're going to do the big, audacious engineering, technological, scientific breakthroughs? Well, you have to take risks.”
In an article originally written for Popular Mechanics for the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, MIT alumnus Buzz Aldrin makes a case for why Americans should aim to travel to the Moon again. “A return to the Moon offers a way to leverage an evolutionary expansion of our capability in space,” Aldrin wrote.
Code developed by Margaret Hamilton, who led the development of the onboard flight software for the Apollo missions at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, was “good — so good, in fact, that it very well might have saved the entire Apollo 11 mission,” writes Dylan Matthews for Vox.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Shirley Leung spotlights the thousands of women who helped make the Apollo 11 mission a success, including Margaret Hamilton and Saydean Zeldin of the MIT Instrumentation Lab. Zeldin, who worked on the program responsible for turning the command module’s engines on and off, recalls that she “had to formulate the equations that we were going to code.”
CBS News reporter Norah O’Donnell explores how Margaret Hamilton, who led the development of the onboard flight software for the Apollo missions, was “critical to the success of the Apollo 11 mission.” Hamilton explains that, “It was the first time man walked on the moon and the first time software ran on the moon.”
CBS News reporter William Harwood spotlights the Apollo 11 astronauts who made history by successfully completing the first landing on the moon, including Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, who “earned a Ph.D. in orbital mechanics from MIT and helped perfect the rendezvous techniques needed by Apollo crews.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Lee Hotz explores the development of the Apollo Guidance Computer at the MIT Instrumentation Lab. Holtz writes that the computer’s “legacy is in just about every pocket, driveway, home and office. Its descendants helped to remake how the world learns, works, plays, communicates, spends and socializes.”