MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics | April 2022
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Announcements
Join us for the Department Community Awards on May 11
The votes have been counted! Now it's time to come celebrate your colleagues for this year’s Community Recognition Awards ceremony! Join us on Wednesday, May 11 at noon in person in 33-116 or on Zoom.
News & Honors
  • Moe Winn is this year's recipient of the MIT Everett Moore Baker Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, which recognizes "exceptional interest and ability in the instruction of undergraduates.” It is the only award in which the nomination and selection of recipients is done entirely by students. The award will be given at the 2022 Awards Convocation Ceremony will be held on Monday, May 2.

  • Jonathan How has been inducted into the University of Toronto Engineering Alumni Network Hall of Distinction. The honor recognizes alumni "whose performances have ultimately defined what is most exemplary in our graduates and in our profession. The careers of the members stand as examples and add a sense of reality to the aspirations of successive generations of engineering students." The award will be conferred during a celebration in November 2022. 

  • The Lunar Tower Team was invited by Lunar Outpost, Inc to collaborate with them and with NASA Langley Research Center in an initiative to put MIT’s lunar tower on a future lunar rover as part of a Tipping Point proposal to NASA’s Space Technology Missions Directorate. This new collaboration between MIT, NASA and Lunar Outpost, Inc. was launched April 4.

  • Nancy Leveson gave a webinar for Engineers Australia (an organization similar to IEEE) on system safety engineering that hosted more than 2,000 people attendees.

  • Spot Award recipients for the month of April include: Anthony Zolnik, Beata Shuster, Helen Halaris, Karen Bruce (x2!), and Sara Cody. Learn more about how you can recognize your colleagues (note: click "LOGIN" on the top right menu to log in via Touchstone and view internal pages) with AeroAstro's Spot Recognition program.
Research
Harsh Bhundiya, Fabien Royer, and Zack Cordero recently published an article in the Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance titled “Engineering Framework for Assessing Materials and Processes for In-Space Manufacturing.” The article provides guidelines for selecting materials and processes for manufacturing in space and argues that deformation processing is the ideal way to fabricate structures on orbit.

This is part of a larger project to develop a novel in-space manufacturing method called Bend-Forming. The method relies on CNC wire bending of ductile materials to construct stiff trusses which can serve as a support structure for large solar arrays, solar sails, and antenna apertures. They are currently developing a demonstration of a 1 m-diameter mesh reflector antenna fabricated with Bend-Forming that will be tested in an RF test facility at Lincoln Lab this summer. Collaborators for this project are Prof. Jeff Lang (EECS) and technical staff at Lincoln Lab. The project is made possible thanks to support from Lincoln Lab and Northrop Grumman Corporation.
Laurens Voet, Prakash Prashanth, Ray Speth, Jayant Sabnis, Choon Tan, and Steven Barrett authored a paper, "Sensitivities of aircraft acoustic metrics to engine design and control variables for multi-disciplinary optimization" that was recently accepted for publication in the AIAA Journal.
Together with their collaborators at Tsinghua University,  Xin “Cyrus” Huang and Brian Williams co-authored a paper describing a machine-learning system that efficiently predicts the future trajectories of multiple road users, like drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, which could enable an autonomous vehicle to more safely navigate city streets. The research will be presented at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Spotted on Social 👀
AeroAstro Runs Boston!
Graduate students Colin Pavan, Ben Martell, and Charlotte Lowey ran the 2022 Boston Marathon on April 18!

Charlotte (bib #11679) finished in 4:12:45, Colin (bib # 4247) finished in 2:58:30, and Ben, who ran to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, finished in 2:38:16! Congratulations to our AeroAstro Marathon Finishers!
Say hello to future aerospace engineer Cassius Vincent Frontin!
Cory Frontin and his wife Judy recently welcomed their son, Cassius Vincent Frontin, to the world! Mom, dad, and baby are all happy and healthy! Congratulations!
In April, MIT officially released the Institute's Values Statement. Co-led by Daniel Hastings (pictured above during a recent visit to Blue Origin), AeroAstro was well-represented on the Value Statement Committee of 22 faculty, staff and students, which also included Robin Courchesne-Sato and Cadence Payne. For more than a year, the committee worked together to articulate a set of values that best encapsulate the MIT spirit. The final product is built upon three key pillars: “Excellence and Curiosity,” “Openness and Respect,” and “Belonging and Community.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
DEI Best Practices


April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month
April 27, 2022 was Denim Day, a campaign in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The campaign began after a ruling by the Italian Supreme Court where a rape conviction was overturned. The following day, the women in the Italian Parliament came to work wearing jeans in solidarity with the victim.

Denim Day is in response to this case and the activism surrounding it and to bring awareness to victim blaming and destructive myths that surround sexual violence, which has grown into a movement. As the longest-running sexual violence prevention and education campaign in history, each year Denim Day asks everyone to make a social statement with a fashion statement by wearing jeans on this day as a visible means of protest against the misconceptions that surround sexual violence.

Be an Active Bystander:
 
Additional Information:
DEI Annual Report Feedback:

We are pleased to share the Annual Report developed by the AeroAstro DEI committee, chaired by Professor Paulo Lozano. Please view the DEI Annual Report, Implementation Plan, an updated DEI Strategic Plan, and additional initiatives at https://bit.ly/2XV kh1N .
 
Please note the options to provide your feedback on the Annual Report
  1. Via email to aa-diversity@mit.edu
  2. Online anonymous feedback https://bit.ly/3FYKU6c     
 
Thank you for championing the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, efforts in AeroAstro as we embark on our quest for DEI excellence.
Community Corner
Did you know MIT has the following Employee Resource Groups? 
  • African, Black, American, Caribbean (ABAC) ERG
  • Asian Pacific American (APA) ERG
  • Disabilities ERG
  • Latino ERG
  • Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender, Queer (LBGTQ+) ERG
  • Millennials ERG
  • Women in Technology (WIT) ERG
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are employee-led groups formed around common interests, common bonds, or similar backgrounds. Learn more about MIT’s ERGs and how to get involved.

*It’s important that that you feel safe, respected, and supported as part of the MIT AeroAstro community. Learn more about local and Institute reporting paths. (Note: Touchstone login required to view page, click LOGIN at the top right menu.)
Successful Thesis Defenders
Dr. Ezinne Uzo-Okoro 
"Robots Making Satellites: Advancing In-space Assembly Through On-orbit Robotic Assembly"
April 7, 2022

Dr. Igor Spasojevic
"Algorithmic Aspects 
of Perception-Aware Motion Planning on Resource-Constrained Platforms"
April 12, 2022

Did you successfully defend your graduate thesis? Send a photo to aa-communications@mit.edu to be featured as one of our Successful Defenders!
Quoted
“I encourage other women leaders to trust their decisions. Once you make a decision, stick with it.

Our intuition is better than we think.”

Summer Hoss ‘23 in an article about undergraduate women who lead by the MIT Edgerton Center.
News & Publications
Below are a few highlights of AeroAstro media coverage:
Highlights
Alvin Harvey and Nicole McGaa were featured on an episode of Xploration Outer Space where they discussed their indigenous roots, their path to MIT, their research, and the importance of diverse perspectives in aerospace engineering.
MIT’s team participating in NASA’s RASC-AL 2022 challenge has been selected as finalist in the Martian Water-based ISRU architecture theme. Their BART & MARGE concept relies on a fully integrated and mobile architecture with no fixed centralized infrastructure that is able to reliably produce large quantities of methalox propellant from thick ice sheets at the mid-northern latitudes of Mars.
Join the Lunar Tower Team! As summer approaches some veteran members of the Lunar Tower Team are moving on, creating openings for new members. Ben is headed to SpaceX to work on Starship, Josh is headed to Apple to work on product design and Natasha is headed to Europe for a year of MechE research. Given this, and given our existing Space Act Agreement commitments to NASA and, now, our new Tipping Point commitment to Lunar Outpost, Inc., our team is actively recruiting new members.

The MIT Lunar Tower team was formed in October 2019 by 16 MIT students, graduates and undergraduates from diverse programs and departments. Over one year, while spread over 3 continents and six time zones, the MELLTT student team designed, built, and tested the first pathfinder version of MELLTT, the Multifunctional Expandable Lunar Lightweight Tall Tower. During the summer the goal is to build the next model of tower system in collaboration with NASA’s Langley Research Center. MELLTT is designed to stow compactly on a commercial lunar lander that delivers it near a PSR. A cubesat-inspired elevated platform easily integrates with a variety of user payloads including radio repeaters, lasers for mapping and power beaming or multi-spectral imagers. The team received two awards from NASA at the BIG Idea Challenge Forum in January, 2021, including the “Path to Flight Award” for the project with the best prospects of flying to the Moon. 

The team is based at its private lab space @ MIT’s Space Resources Workshop (37-084) and is advised by AeroAstro Professors Jeffrey Hoffman and Olivier de Weck. Looking ahead, the project continues under a three-year Space Act Agreement with NASA Langley Research Center's Deployable Composite Booms team. 
Research Scientist Dr. Afreen Siddiqi and Prof. Olivier de Weck launched a new course on Sustainable Infrastucture Systems with MIT Professional Education through the Digital Programs Plus Initiative. The course Sustainable Infrastructure Systems: Planning and Operations, explores systems theory as the basis for analysis, development, and engineering of sustainable, adaptable technological systems. This course equips participants with the knowledge and skills needed to develop modern sustainable infrastructure, from public policy and planning to operations management and data collection.
MIT AeroAstro and the Aerospace Corporation jointly hosted a workshop on Materials Challenges in Reusable Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines at the Aerospace headquarters in El Segundo, CA on March 3 and 4. The workshop, organized by Assistant Professor Zack Cordero, brought together leading experts from academia, government, and industry, including engineers from Blue Origin, SpaceX, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Ursa Major, among other major US contractors and companies. One star attendee and featured panelist was recent MIT AeroAstro alum Charlie Garcia (SB ’19), now Special Programs Chief Engineer at AGILE Space Industries. Discussions over the two-day workshop seeded new collaborations and highlighted the need for research on oxidizer-compatibility issues; design frameworks for simultaneous optimization of performance, reliability, reusability and cost; and lifing models for additively manufactured hardware. A follow-up meeting is planned for Summer 2023 to review progress towards addressing these technical challenges.
Do you have highlights to include in future editions of the
Monthly Roundup?