News & Honors

• Afreen Siddiqi was an invited speaker at the Artemis and Ethics Workshop, organized by NASA’s Office of Technology Policy and Strategy (OTPS) at NASA Headquarters April 12-14. The 2.5 day workshop was centered on understanding how issues of ethics should be approached in planning for future human exploration. Siddiqi gave a presentation titled “From Sustainable Development to Exploration: Concepts from Living on Earth for Forging Futures on Moon and Mars," in which she drew parallels with concepts and practice for sustainable development for formulating concepts for future planetary exploration.

• Youssef Marzouk has been selected as the Raymond Bisplinghoff Faculty Fellow. The fellowship is a 3-year term intended to provide a modest amount of funding to enable post-tenure faculty to pursue a new direction in their career. Previous AeroAstro holders include Ian Waitz, Steve Hall, Jon How, Dave Darmofal, Jaime Peraire, Brian Williams, Brian Wardle, Nick Roy, Steven Barrett, Julie Shah and Kerri Cahoy.

• Wesley Harris presented the Walker Distinguished Lecture for the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University on March 29, 2023. 

• The 2003 MIT Alumni Class Funds have selected a proposal by Olivier de Weck, Luca Carlone and Rea Lavi for funding under the new AeroAstro Digital Education Program. The proposal is titled “Teaching Aerospace Engineering in Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities” and it will develop an experimental AR/VR class. The funding amount is $33,500 and the period is from July 2023 to June 2024.

• Maya Nasr has received Rotary International's Annual Women in Leadership Award.

• Harsh Bhundiya, a PhD student in the AMSL, has been selected as a 2023 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow for his proposal, “Modeling the In-Space Manufacturing of Large, Lightweight Structures with Robotic Deformation Processing.” 

• ESL PhD candidate Seamus Lombardo has been named an International Astronautical Foundation (IAF) 2023 Global Space Conference on Climate Change (GLOC) student grant winner. As part of the grant, Lombardo will travel to GLOC 2023 in Oslo, Norway from May 23-25, 2023.

• Kinjal Ruecker, a PhD student in the GTL and the AMSL has been named an NSF Fellow and the 2023 MIT OGE Zakhartchenko Fellow.

• Andrea Tagliabue, a PhD student in the ACL and LIDS, was recently selected as a finalist for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Outstanding Paper Award for Dynamics and Control. Tagliabue will present his paper, "Robust, High-Rate Trajectory Tracking on Insect-Scale Soft-Actuated Aerial Robots with Deep-Learned Tube MPC," during an award finalist session.

• Bryt Bradley, Nancy Leveson, David Mindell and Anthony Zolnik were all inducted into the MIT Quarter Century Club (QCC) last month. The QCC celebrates MIT faculty and staff who have dedicated 25 or more years of service to the Institute.

• AeroAstro-MERS alum Lars Blackmore received the 2023 AIAA prestigious F.E. Newbold award for Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing for his team’s exceptional work at SpaceX.

Research

The MIT Homesteading Mars team have been selected as finalists for the NASA's 2023 RASC-AL Forum that will take place in June at Cocoa Beach, FL. The team is designing a crewed human exploration architecture of Mars named "Pale Red Dot" that can enable astronauts to survive on Mars for at least 7 years with minimal support from Earth. The concept is a polis-based architecture for the long-term exploration of the Red planet, with exciting and diverse developmental opportunities to thrive.

The team members are Madelyn Hoying (team lead), George Lordos (lead designer), Liliana Arias, Ignacio Arzuaga Garcia, H Azzouz, John Beilstein, Nicole Chan, Ezra Eyre, Dane Gleason, Meltem Ikinci, Nadia Khan, Divya Krishnan, Yuying Lin, Lanie McKinney, Duncan Miller, Cormac O’Neill, Omar Orozco, Palak Patel, David Villegas and Alisa Webb. Mentors include Alexandros Lordos, Chloé Gentgen and Kir Latyshev and the faculty advisors are Olivier de Weck and Jeffrey Hoffman.

STAR Lab's CLICK-A spacecraft deorbited on March 30, 2023 after 7 months in orbit.

The CubeSat Laser Infrared CrosslinK (CLICK) mission is a NASA-funded mission looking to advance the state of the art in free space optical communications for nanosatellites. The CLICK-A spacecraft, the first phase of the CLICK mission, hosted the CLICK-A terminal, designed by STAR Lab to demonstrate optical communication downlinks to a low-cost optical ground station. Launched to the International Space Station in July of 2022 and deployed in September, the operations team was able to successfully demonstrate key technologies for the next phase of the mission. The terminal was able to demonstrate independent fine pointing for the optical communication terminal from the spacecraft through the use of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fast steering mirror (FSM). Other key technologies that were demonstrated are commercial off-the-shelf acquisition camera and lens as well as an optical amplifier. These key technologies are shared with the optical crosslink terminal to be demonstrated in the next phase of the mission. This first phase was key in developing operational insights and processes required for the next phase of the mission.

This is a GIF of the fine tracking camera on their optical ground station during the best optical overpass with the CLICK-A spacecraft. It is sped up ~5X, acquisition was held for around ~1.5 minutes.

Rodrigo Lopes Rose, a graduate student in the ESL, had a paper published in the International Journal of Reliability Engineering and System Safety. The paper is titled "Accident Investigation and Lessons Not Learned: AcciMap Analysis of Successive Tailings Dam Collapses in Brazil.”

Abstract:

Tailings dam collapses, though rare, have significant human, economic and environmental impacts. In this study, we analyze two tailings dam collapses in Mariana and Brumadinho, Brazil, in 2015 and 2019 respectively, with a focus on the investigation of the first accident and the repeatability of its causal factors years later. We present an overview of tailings dams failures, followed by a literature review on these two disasters. We synthesize the findings of these reports and highlight the technical, managerial, and governmental factors which contributed to each accident, through an incremental AcciMap approach. We explore the investigation of the Mariana accident, emphasizing the "lessons not learned" which allowed similar causes to develop in Brumadinho. From these results, we propose three sets of recommendations geared towards enhancing the safety of tailings dams operation, improving the safety culture in the Brazilian regulatory environment, and improving the investigation process for dam accidents to ensure all contributing causes are uncovered and addressed. The key point in this discussion is the restructuring of the chains of accountability within dam accident response through nonpartisan inspection and investigation. We conclude with a discussion of the applications of such recommendations in reducing the risk of collapse at similar facilities.

Stewart Isaac and Danielle Wood, in collaboration with researchers from NASA JPL and Washington University in St. Louis' Department of Energy, recently had a paper published in the Journal of Applied Energy titled "Dust soiling effects on decentralized solar in West Africa."

Abstract:

West Africa’s proximity to the Sahara Desert can cause photovoltaic (PV) systems to experience significant power generation reductions when particulates settle onto solar panel surfaces in a phenomenon known as soiling. Previous studies have created models to estimate PV soiling globally, but these models have several limitations in the region due to the accuracy of the input particular matter (PM) concentration values, the accuracy of methods for computing power loss, and the regional use of decentralized solar systems. Here we develop and apply a methodology for the development of a soiling estimation model based on the Coello framework, and evaluate it when using input PM concentration values from both a reanalysis dataset (MERRA-2) and a dataset derived from satellite-observations (WUSTL). This model reduces error in soiling-related power loss estimates by approximately 50% when compared to the unadjusted Coello approach. Using this model, we find soiling losses can exceed 50% in the most greatly affected locations during the Harmattan season and these power losses can vary considerably each year (between 26 and 53% in Niamey, Niger). To support PV system design, we develop a function that relates maximum soiling losses to annual cleaning frequencies in major cities. Finally, we find if decentralized solar is used to meet electricity access goals as projected, PV cleaning costs could sum up to $1Bn (USD) annually in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.