NASA

Members of the ASTERIA team prepare the petite satellite for its journey to space.

Tiny ASTERIA satellite achieves a first for CubeSats

Measurement of an exoplanet transit demonstrates proof of concept that small spacecraft can perform high-precision photometry.

August 15, 2018

High school students (l-r) Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner, and Bria Snell, whose water purification system won them second place in a NASA technology competition, got a tour of the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel as part of their visit to MIT. The visit was sponsored by AeroAfro, an organization of MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics students.

NASA student competitors honored for persistence

MIT student group welcomes an all-black, all-female team who had been targeted by racist and misogynistic members of an infamous online forum.

August 14, 2018

Illustration of NASA's Parker Solar Probe in front of the Sun.

3Q: A bold mission to touch the sun

MIT’s John Belcher discusses the launch of the Parker Solar Probe, which will fly directly into the sun’s atmosphere.

August 13, 2018

Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics head Jaime Peraire calls Rebecca Masterson “an outstanding researcher with an impressive record of accomplishment in space systems engineering and design.”

Rebecca Masterson appointed AeroAstro principal research scientist

Mechanical engineer and instrument scientist on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is the first female principal research scientist in the department's history.

July 19, 2018

Alexa Aguilar is co-president of MIT’s Graduate Women in Aerospace Engineering (GWAE) group. “It's important to me that women have this kind of support and encouragement because I wouldn’t be here without the support of women,” she says.

Networks in aerospace

Graduate student Alexa Aguilar helps tiny satellites communicate and builds connections in her academic community.

June 22, 2018

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope orbits the Sun in concert with the Earth, slowly drifting away from Earth.

Nearly 80 exoplanet candidates identified in record time

Search considered successful “dress rehearsal” for exoplanet hunter TESS.

June 20, 2018

Clouds of pollution float into the sky from two smoke stacks

Checking China’s pollution, by satellite

Study finds reduction in sulfur emissions from power plants.

June 18, 2018

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover snaps a self-portrait on Vera Rubin Ridge.

3 Questions: Roger Summons on finding organic matter on Mars

Discovery adds to evidence suggesting that Mars was at one time habitable.

June 7, 2018

This test image from one of the four cameras aboard the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) captures a swath of the southern sky along the plane of our galaxy. More than 200,000 stars are visible. The image, which is centered in the constellation Centaurus, includes dark tendrils from the Coal Sack Nebula and the bright emission nebula Ced 122 (upper right).The bright star at bottom cente...

TESS takes initial test image

Exoplanet-seeking satellite developed by MIT swings by moon toward final orbit.

May 18, 2018

An artist concept depicts TESS in front of a lava planet orbiting its host star.

Ushering in the next phase of exoplanet discovery

Professor Sara Seager previews a new era of discovery as a leader of the TESS mission, which is expected to find some 20,000 extrasolar planets.

May 3, 2018

A set of flight camera electronics on one of the TESS cameras, developed by the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI), will transmit exoplanet data from the camera to a computer aboard the spacecraft that will process it before transmitting it back to scientists on Earth.

TESS readies for takeoff

Satellite developed by MIT aims to discover thousands of nearby exoplanets, including at least 50 Earth-sized ones.

April 12, 2018

A snapshot of a simulation showing a binary black hole formed in the center of a dense star cluster.

Dense stellar clusters may foster black hole megamergers

Black holes in these environments could combine repeatedly to form objects bigger than anything a single star could produce.

April 10, 2018

MIT students and postdocs visited Congress to advocate for increased federal spending on science and engineering.

MIT students and postdocs visit Capitol Hill to advocate for increases in federal science funding

Members of MIT's Science Policy Initiative meet with members of Congress on Science-Engineering-Technology Congressional Visits Day 2018.

April 9, 2018

MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts (pictured), and the Onsala Space Observatory in Onsala, Sweden are celebrating 50 years since the first transatlantic geodetic very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations.

Celebrating 50 years of transatlantic geodetic radio science

Researchers mark a silver anniversary for a space geodesy technique pioneered at MIT.

April 5, 2018

Left to right: David Niño, senior lecturer in the MIT Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, moderated a discussion with Ellen Ochoa (center), former astronaut and current director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, and MIT Professor Dava Newman, former NASA deputy administrator, about their experiences as leaders with the U.S. space agency.

Lessons in NASA leadership

Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa and AeroAstro Professor Dava Newman share experiences as leaders of the U.S. space program.