Space

DIY-IAP: Watch a Robotics Tournament…in Space

by Jay London on January 23, 2012

in Campus Culture,Design,Events,IAP,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Research,Science,Space

If you’re feeling spaced out this morning, you’re not alone. Teams of high school students are at MIT today for the finale of the third annual Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge, a worldwide competition where students program satellites to complete tasks onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics has joined with NASA, Aurora Flight Sciences, TopCoder, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in sponsoring the competition. The finale takes place today at MIT from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Watch it live on NASA TV or the Zero Robotics site.

In the competition, NASA will upload software developed by the high school students onto SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites), basketball-sized satellites created at MIT, aboard the ISS. Students wrote algorithms for the SPHERES satellites, giving them the opportunity the opportunity to act as simulated ground controllers for space research.

The tournament began in September with over 2,000 students from 147 teams creating algorithms and devising codes. The top 27 teams will have their code sent to the space station where, during today’s competition, astronauts in microgravity will command the satellites to execute the teams’ flight programs. The team with the highest software performance over several rounds of the competition wins the challenge.

SPHERES satellites were developed at MIT in 1999 and first used aboard the ISS in 2006. In addition to the competition, the satellites are used inside the space station to conduct formation flight maneuvers for spacecraft guidance navigation, control, and docking, and they can test a wide range of hardware and software at an affordable cost.

David W. Miller, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, and research scientist Alvar Saenz-Otero PhD ’05 serve as principal investigator and co-investigator, respectively, of the challenge.

For more information on SPHERES, watch a 2009 video where the MIT SPHERES Team held a test session with astronauts Michael Barratt and Timothy Kopra aboard the International Space Station set to the score from “An der schönen blauen Donau” (On The Beautiful Blue Danube) by Johann Strauss II.

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Greetings from Space!

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on June 1, 2011

in Engineering,Space

MIT alumni send greetings from the ISS.

MIT alumni send greetings from the ISS. Click image for video.

Happy anniversary MIT! That’s part of the sesquicentennial message from three alumni astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS).

Greg Chamitoff PhD ’92 (above, right) and Mike Fincke ’89, both crew members on Space Shuttle Endeavour, returned to Earth today, June 1. The third, Cady Coleman ’83, spent five months on the ISS, returning to Earth May 24 in a Russian Soyuz craft.

For this mission, Chamitoff and William Litant, communications director for the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, came up with two ways of commemorating MIT’s myriad contributions to space travel: the video tribute from space and the inclusion in Endeavour’s payload of a 1961 letter written by longtime MIT professor Charles Stark Draper ’26, SM ’28, ScD ’38, whose navigational systems have guided space shuttles and the ISS.

MIT has educated 34 astronauts, the highest number of any university except the military service academies—and we are pretty close there.

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Endeavour Payload to Include Two Alumni, 13 Lego Sets

by Liv on April 29, 2011

in Space

Crew members attired in training versions of their shuttle launch and entry suits await the start of a training session at NASA's Johnson Space Center. From left: Mark Kelly, commander; Michael Fincke, mission specialist; Gregory H. Johnson, pilot; European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori, NASA astronauts Greg Chamitoff and Andrew Feustel, all mission specialists. Photo taken February 2011. Credit: NASA

Space Shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to lift off the pad at 3:47 p.m. EDT in Florida today with a very special payload. Not only will two seasoned MIT astronauts be on board–Greg Chamitoff ’92 and Mike Fincke ’89–the shuttle will also be carrying 13 Lego sets that will be used aboard the International Space Station for playtime (which NASA euphemistically refers to as “research”). Chamitoff and Fincke will MIT join alumna Cady Coleman ’83 aboard the ISS.

The launch marks the final mission for Endeavour, which, along with Atlantis, will be retired by NASA this year. President Obama and his family are expected to attend the shuttle’s launch, as is Rep. Gabby Giffords, whose husband Mark Kelly is leading the crew on mission STS-134.

Over the course of the two-week mission, the Endeavour crew is slated to perform four spacewalks and deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and spare parts, a high-pressure gas tank, and of course the Lego sets.

Still curious about the Legos? NASA says Earthbound students and children will have access to similar sets, so they’ll be able to perform tasks parallel to the crew members. Some tasks, for example, might focus on the complexity of building things in a microgravity space environment. Leland Melvin, NASA’s associate administrator for education, says, “These projects not only foster creativity but also instill in the young builders a real sense of the engineering and design principles that NASA uses every day. Fun learning activities like these can help inspire kids to become the next generation of explorers.”

Get Involved

Launch: Watch live streaming coverage of the launch and ongoing NASA TV coverage of the STS-134 mission on NASA Television.

Tweetup: More than 150 @NASA followers are attending a massive Tweetup scheduled to take place the day of the launch. Those who aren’t on site can follow Tweetup activities in real time by visiting the Buzzroom or keeping an eye out for Twitter hashtag #NASATweetup.

Learn: Brush up on STS-134 trivia by visiting NASA’s website for the mission.

Legos: Maybe you know a student or child (or ::cough:: yourself) who would be into engaging with the NASA-Lego project. If so, head over to legospace.com.

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Computing, circa Apollo 11

by Patrick on April 17, 2011

in Prof. Winston's Ideas,Space


Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

If you didn’t make it to the MIT+150 Symposium, Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything, too bad. It was really good.

Representative examples: Our own Charles Vest reminisced about the transformation of practically everything. John Hennessy, President of Stanford, and himself a Computer Scientist, talked about computer architecture. Nicholas Negroponte and Eric Lander covered one-laptop per child and the computational revolution in biology. Andrew Lo explained the role of computing in financial catastrophes, and Rodney Brooks offered his views on the future of personal robots. A panel discussion featured five winners of the Turing Award.

Videos of the talks will, of course, soon be up on the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee, who spoke about the future of the web.

Computing technology has moved so fast, we all tend to take it for granted now, so it was good to have a party favor, delivered at the symposium dinner, that reminds us of how far we have come. Someone found in a warehouse somewhere a pallet full of six-inch Pickett 600ES slide rules, the same model that Buzz Aldrin (MIT ScD ’63) took with him on Apollo 11.

I checked it out.  Yep, 2 × 2 = 4.  I figured it out several billion times slower
than my laptop and only got an approximate answer.

No doubt when the speakers prepare for MIT’s bicentennial, they will look at our videos
and laugh at how excited we all said we were, just as we chuckle over slide rules in
2011.

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Choose a Wake-up Song for Alumni Astronauts

by Liv on March 30, 2011

in Modern Geekhood,Space

Astronaut Gregory Johnson rests in his sleeping bag on Atlantis during a 2009 mission. Credit: NASA

Imagine you’re an astronaut zipped in a sleeping bag and strapped to the wall of a space shuttle. (For the moment, put aside the question of how you fall asleep in the first place.) How do you wake up? Natural light? A maniacal alarm clock, or a swift poke in the ribs ? Nope, it’s the wake-up song, which has been a NASA tradition since the 1960s.

The wake-up selections are piped in via mission control to “promote a sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps among the astronauts and ground support personnel,” explains an entry on NASA’s website. Historically chosen by flight controllers or by crewmembers’ friends and family members, NASA recently started asking the public to take part–which means you, member of the public, can submit an original composition and/or help choose what mission crew members–including MIT alumni Mike Fincke and Greg Chamitoff–wake up to. Both Fincke ’89 and Chamitoff PhD ’92 are mission specialists for the upcoming STS-134 mission, set to launch April 19.

In anticipation of the mission, the NASA Space Rock Committee has narrowed a list of 1350 original songs to 10 finalists that you can vote on. They include:

Boogie Woogie Shuffle
“A playful road song and interpretation of a childhood dream of being an astronaut,” by Savannah College of Art & Design student Ryan McCullough.

Dreams You Give
A song that “outlines all the ways that NASA and the shuttle program have impacted the lives of different groups of Americans,” by members of the Missouri-based Plunkett family.

Endeavour, It’s a Brand New Day
A piece seemingly inspired by shuttle launches, by Cocoa Beach resident Susan Rose Simonetti.

Cast your vote by April 19 at https://songcontest.nasa.gov/toporig.aspx.

Learn more about mission STS-134: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts134/index.html

And read a somewhat dated NASA article about space sleep: Wide Awake in Outer Space

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Alumnus Shares Photos of Discovery

by Liv on March 9, 2011

in Space

John Tylko ’79 recently shared a handful of photos from space shuttle Discovery’s February 24 launch. The shuttle returns to Earth later today to cap a 27-year spaceflight career before heading to a yet unchosen museum. Stay tuned for photos of the landing!

Two of Tylko’s photos are posted below (plus a couple from NASA). Scroll all the way down to read a short bio of alumnus Steve Bowen ENG ’93, a crew member on the Discovery mission.

Steve Bowen ENG '93 training for the STS-133 mission. Credit: NASA

Discovery's STS-133 crew portrait in front of the astronaut van on the morning of February 24 prior to departing for the launch pad. Bowen is third from the right. Credit: John Tylko

Space shuttle Discovery launches from the Kennedy Space Center on February 24 with Bowen on board. Credit: John Tylko

Bowen conducts his final spacewalk outside of the International Space Station during Discovery's STS-133 mission. Credit: NASA

Want to learn more about Bowen? Tylko wrote a brief bio describing the alumnus’s career:

“Bowen was born in Cohasset Massachusetts in 1964.  He graduated from Cohasset High School in 1982 and from the United States Naval Academy in 1986.  He received the Degree of Ocean Engineer from MIT in 1993.  Bowen is a US Navy Captain and was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2000.

Bowen became the first astronaut to fly on consecutive US space missions.  He was a crew member of the STS-132 mission on space shuttle Atlantis from May 14 to 26, 2010.  He wasn’t originally scheduled to fly on STS-133 until the lead spacewalker, Timothy Kopra, was injured in a bicycling accident in January. Bowen was selected to replace Kopra based on his spacewalking experience and his role as chief of the EVA branch of the Astronaut Office.

During his three space shuttle missions, Bowen completed seven spacewalks, totaling 47 hours and 18 minutes in EVA (extravehicular activity).

NASA astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman ’83 is currently on board the International Space Station.  She was launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 15, 2010 on a six month long endurance mission.  This marks the fifteenth time that two or more MIT trained astronauts are simultaneously in space.

Discovery is in its 39th and final space shuttle mission.  Discovery was launched on February 24, 2011 and is scheduled to return to the Kennedy Space Center on March 9, 2011.

Next month, space shuttle Atlantis will deliver the MIT developed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station.  Two of the crew members for the STS-134 mission are also MIT alumni: Edward “Mike” Fincke ’89 and Gregory E. Chamitoff  PhD ’92.”

Special thanks to John Tylko for sharing his photos and bio!

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Excited About Exoplanets? Here’s How to Get Involved

by Liv on February 16, 2011

in Engineering,Research,Space

Artist’s impression of a gas-giant exoplanet transiting across the face of its star. Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

If you read yesterday’s post about exoplanets and were pining for ways to get involved, you’re in luck. Whether you’re an MIT student or an aspiring planet hunter, living in Cambridge or living in Cancun, there’s something for you.

How to Get Involved with Exoplanets if You’re…

An MIT student

Several researchers at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research are working on exoplanets, including Kerri Cahoy and Joshua Winn. Find their contact information using MIT’s People Directory.

Sara Seager also has a few exoplanet research groups. Visit her website for details and contact info.

An aspiring planet hunter

Participants in the citizen science project Planet Hunters (www.planethunters.org) sort through Kepler data and search for possible transit events. What happens if you spot a transit? The Planet Hunters website says it “maintains a list of transiting planets that the Kepler team announces, so the first thing that will happen is that we will check that list. If the flagged transit event is for a star that the Kepler team are already keeping an eye on, we’ll let you know. If this event has not been identified and several Planet Hunters are flagging the same data, the science team will investigate. If this appears to be a new discovery, then we will follow up to obtain spectroscopic data using the Keck telescope in Hawaii. If the transit candidate passes all of the screening tests, the result will be submitted for publication. Planet Hunters who discover new transiting planets will be included as co-authors on our papers.”

Learn more about Planet Hunters in this short tutorial.

Close to Cambridge

Last weekend the Museum of Science in Boston unveiled its new $9 million Charles Hayden Planetarium, and one of the first programs on its agenda, called “Undiscovered Worlds” is about (you guessed it!) exoplanets. This Slice blogger had an opportunity to see the show and found it dazzling. Below is a  photo from the trip.

The Charles Hayden Planetarium. Credit: Liv Gold

The exoplanet show runs through March 12, 2011.

Far from campus

Use the MIT News Office to stay up to date on exoplanet research. Archived articles are located at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/topic/exoplanets.html.

You can also take a free course through MIT OpenCourseWare called Extrasolar Planets: Physics and Detection Techniques. According to the syllabus, the course “covers the basic principles of planet atmospheres and interiors applied to the study of extrasolar planets (exoplanets). We focus on fundamental physical processes related to observable exoplanet properties. We also provide a quantitative overview of detection techniques and an introduction to the feasibility of the search for Earth-like planets, biosignatures and habitable conditions on exoplanets.”

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Alumna to Dock at ISS Today (Live Video!)

by Liv on December 17, 2010

in Space

Catherine Coleman, expedition 26/27 flight engineer, participates in a spacesuit fit check at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Credit: NASA

For the third time in her life, alumna Cady Coleman ’83 is on a shuttle headed for the International Space Station, some 220 miles above earth. The retired Air Force officer is accompanied by two crew mates aboard the Russian Soyuz; together they will join a team of three who have been working on the ISS since October. Live coverage of the docking is scheduled for today at 2:30 pm ET. View it at www.nasa.gov.

NASA says that the journey from the Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where the crew blasted off on Wednesday, to the ISS will last just over 49 hours. Upon landing, the astronauts are scheduled to participate in a traditional greeting ceremony, talk to family and officials on the ground, and then be briefed on station safety procedures.The remainder of Coleman’s six-month stay will be consumed with experiments, station maintenance, and research.

In a blog post Wednesday, Coleman wrote:

I’ll keep this short because there are still a few things that I’d like to pack into my last few hours on the planet until next May, not to mention I’m spending as much time as I can with my husband Josh and my sons Josiah and Jamey, before I go. I’m hoping that the photos attached will tell the story of our final few weeks of training before launch.

Who would have thought that it would all happen so fast? This day was always something that would happen sometime in the future… but I find myself in Baikonur, Russia, preparing to launch on a Soyuz for a six-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS), AND I’m turning 50 today. If this is what “Downhill from Here” means – then bring it on!

I thought I knew what getting ready to launch would be like. As a backup for Expedition 24, I watched the prime crew as they completed all the training that precedes a Soyuz launch. I climbed into their spacecraft for a fit check, took all the last classes, got signed off by the medical and training commissions and was pronounced “Certified for Spaceflight”. If my counterpart on the prime crew couldn’t launch for some reason, then I would go in their place.

Now I’m finding that everything feels different when you are really the NEXT crew to launch. I realize that the prime crew always had a look in their eyes – a kind of wonder and anticipation that can’t be felt by the backups. Not many people get to leave our planet in a spacecraft bound for the International Space Station – and Dmitry Kondratev, Paolo Nespoli and I, the crew of Soyuz TMA 20, are launching in less than 24 hours!

Read more of Coleman’s post at www.cnn.com. You can also follow her on Twitter under the handle @Astro_Cady.

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Buzz Cuts a Rug on Dancing with the Stars

by Amy Marcott on March 19, 2010

in Authors,In the News,Modern Geekhood,Space

Buzz Aldrin in his astronaut days and now his dancing days.

Left: Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin takes photos during training on July 1, 1969. Photo: NASA Kennedy Space Center. Right: Aldrin rehearses with dance partner Ashly Costa. A typical session in the studio is three-and-a-half to four hours. Photo: ABC/Rick Rowell.

A competitive nature propelled Buzz Aldrin ScD ’63 into his career as an astronaut, and it’s that same spirit he’s taking with him on his next venture, as a contestant on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), premiering this Monday, March 22. Aldrin has already sized up his competition, targeting none other than Olympic figure skating gold medalist Evan Lysacek as his most formidable challenge.

“If you take [Lysacek's] age and multiply by three, it’s still eight years younger than me,” Aldrin says. But he’s not daunted. For relaxation, the octogenarian scuba dives and downhill skis (which he took up at age 50) and continues exploring other non-celestial worlds: Antarctica, the Titanic ruins two-and-a-half miles below the ocean surface, the North Pole on a Russian nuclear-powered icebreaker. “This dude, for an 80 year old—he could probably bench-press me if he wanted to,” Lysacek told Access Hollywood.”

And let’s not forget that Aldrin brings something to the competition no other dancer does. An MIT degree. What exactly does that afford him? “Concentration, orderly thinking, memory, integrated thinking of transitions from one step to another,…an appreciation for the bigger picture” he says. “I learned all of those things at MIT.”

Buzz Aldrin dancing with partner Ashly Costa for the premier of Dancing with the Stars.

Photo: ABC/Rick Rowell.

On being hip
Dancing on a reality show is not Aldrin’s first foray into pop culture. You might actually be surprised to learn how visible he is. He’s performed in a rap video with Snoop Dogg and others (view the performance or see the making-of video at the end of this post—it’s hilarious); guest-starred in episodes of The Simpsons, Numb3rs, Sesame Street, 30 Rock (airing May 6), and more; will soon release an iPhone app; launched a space brand, Rocket Hero, that’s been licensed by electronics, toys, science-edutainment, and apparel companies, like Nike for a skate shoe; is the inspiration behind Disney’s Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear; and served as the icon for MTV’s original station identification and its video music award, the Moonman (originally called the Buzzy). MTV is so indebted to Aldrin that it has given him its first-ever official endorsement of a DWTS contender, dubbing Aldrin the celebrity they most hope wins the competition.

Some of Aldrin’s many public appearances are aimed at promoting books he’s coauthored, of which there are seven, including two illustrated children’s books, two science-fiction novels, and two autobiographies. His most recent is the memoir Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon (Harmony 2009), written with Ken Abraham. [click to continue…]

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Space Call: Obama on the Phone, Alumni Everywhere

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on February 19, 2010

in Space

The President and students talk to astronauts.

The President and students talk to astronauts.

President Obama called the International Space Station crew—including Nicholas Patrick SM ’90, PhD ’96 and Tim “T.J.” Creamer SM ’92—Wednesday to say thanks for installing the beautiful picture window and to let a group of excited middle school students ask the astronauts some questions.

In the course of the conversation, Obama made a pitch for continued space exploration and the astronauts pointed out the value of research in space. Scientists can study the impact of gravity, for example, because they see what happens without it—flames in space are ball-shaped not tear-drop shaped and cells grow “very purely” and stay round and so it’s easier to see how they are replicated.

Kwatsi Alibaruho '95 describes his personal journey to the NASA control room.

Kwatsi Alibaruho '95 describes his personal journey to the NASA control room.

Factoid: This is the 13th time in history that two or more MIT Astronauts are in space at the same time. In fact, the lead flight director on the current mission is an alumnus as well. Kwatsi Alibaruho ’95, the first African-American NASA flight director, describes in a YouTube video how he set his goal of going to MIT when he was ten—and that successful journey eventually led him to his position at NASA.

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