Planetary science and exploration

Clara Sousa-Silva and Benjamin Rackham will be 51 Pegasi b Fellows at MIT within the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Lighting up exoplanets

The Heising-Simons Foundation selects Clara Sousa-Silva and Benjamin Rackham for 51 Pegasi b Fellowships at MIT.

March 27, 2019

The Apollo astronauts and engineers were joined onstage by some of MIT’s astronaut alumni, including two active astronauts, Mike Fincke and Warren Hoburg (in blue jackets).

MIT celebrates 50th anniversary of historic moon landing

Symposium featuring former astronauts and other Apollo mission luminaries examines the program’s legacy.

March 15, 2019

In Indonesia, ancient tectonic activity has exposed rocks to tropical conditions, causing them to naturally absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Tectonics in the tropics trigger Earth’s ice ages, study finds

Major tectonic collisions near the equator have caused three ice ages in the last 540 million years.

March 14, 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

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

NASA’s TESS mission, which will survey the entire sky over the next two years, has already discovered three new exoplanets around nearby stars.

TESS discovers its third new planet, with longest orbit yet

Measurements indicate a dense, gaseous, “sub-Neptune” world, three times the size of Earth.

January 7, 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

NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes are both now located beyond the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the sun. Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, or the edge of the heliosphere, in August 2012. Heading in a different direction, Voyager 2 crossed another part of the heliopause in November 2018.

3 Questions: MIT goes interstellar with Voyager 2

MIT Kavli's John Richardson describes MIT's role in the historic passing of the Voyager 2 craft past the heliopause and into the interstellar medium.

December 10, 2018

On ancient Mars, water carved channels and transported sediments to form fans and deltas within lake basins. Examination of spectral data acquired from orbit show that some of these sediments have minerals that indicate chemical alteration by water. In the Jezero Crater delta, sediments contain clays and carbonates. (This image combines information from two instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissanc...

Mars 2020 landing site offers unique opportunities

EAPS professors Summons, Bosak, and Weiss provide insight on how the Jezero Crater can advance the study of Martian history and the search for ancient life.

November 28, 2018