MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics | November 2022 | |
Happy November AeroAstro! The Roundup is a monthly e-newsletter to keep students, faculty, and staff up-to-date on research, community news, and important events and happenings around the department and MIT. If you'd like to include news items in next month's issue, submit them to aa-communications@mit.edu! | |
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Have you seen the new research screens in the 2nd floor hallway of building 33?
If you'd like to see your papers featured, please fill out this form!
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The 2022 Minta Martin Lecture, "U.S. Space Policy, National Security, and Global Futures" was given by Dr. Scott Pace.
Currently, Pace is the Director of the Space Policy Institute, Director of the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy and Director of the MA International Science and Technology Policy program at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Under the previous government administration, Pace was the Executive Director of the National Space Council. Watch the talk above.
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There's still time to donate your old winter clothing! This year, a bin has been placed in AeroAstro Headquarters (33 - 207). If you have any gently used coats, hats, gloves, scarves or other winter clothing, please consider donating them to help members of our community. All donations are directly distributed to students who need them.
Questions? Contact kbennett@mit.edu.
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Clothing Drive Bin Locations
- AeroAstro HQ (33 - 207)
- Libraries: Dewey, Hayden, Lewis
- Student Support Services (S3)
- CARE Team (7 - 143)
- WGS (14N - 213)
- OVC/SFS/OFY (7 - 103)
- Student Financial Services
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Six students formed an MIT team of Indigenous undergraduates to participate in the NASA First Nations Launch Competition. Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman is providing mentorship as the faculty advisor.
Aaron Ashley '16, Nicole McGaa '24, Hailey Polson '26 and Peyton Meader '26 are pictured here at a recent workshop in Kenosha, WI.
Undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning more can contact the team at mit-fnl@mit.edu.
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Danielle Wood was a speaker at the first US-Africa Space Partnership Roundtable, hosted by the African Space Leadership Institute (ASLI) on Nov. 3. The first U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit will be held from Dec. 13 - 15, 2022.
The objectives of the roundtable, “Towards a Framework for U.S.-Africa Space Partnership," included:
- Identify possible areas of collaboration (policy, programs and projects) between the U.S. and Africa;
- Initiate a mechanism for periodic dialogue between Africa and the U.S. on space-related issues of mutual interests;
- Gather thoughts on a framework for U.S.-Africa Space Partnership.
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Class 16.55/22.64J visited MIT’s nuclear reactor! The course features a hierarchy of models to study ionized gases or plasmas: including simple description through the motion of charged particles in prescribed electric and magnetic fields, statistical description of those particles through their distribution functions in energy and velocity (i.e. kinetic theory), fluid models and more.
In collaboration with Dr. Gordon Kohse, Managing Director for Operations of the MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab, Carmen Guerra-Garcia organized a class trip to the MIT Nuclear Reactor to perform a lab. The experiment consisted of measuring the velocities of neutrons escaping the reactor to measure the distribution function of their energies and the temperature of the moderator. This is a neat demonstration of kinetic theory and distribution functions at work!
|  | Raji Patel is featured in the MIT exhibition, South Asia and the Institute: Transformative Connections, which opened at the Maihaugen Gallery, Hayden Library, last month and will be on display until Oct. 2023.The exhibition is the culmination of a study sponsored and supported by the MIT Digital Humanities Lab, The Office of the President and the MIT Alumni Association, among others, to chronicle MIT’s history of students from around the globe. |  | |
On Oct. 11, students from an Engineering Systems Lab team led by Olivier de Weck organized a brainstorming workshop at AWS premises in Cambridge to innovate on the space logistics for the planned "Orbital Reef” commercial low Earth orbit space station.
Fifteen experts from NASA, Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Amazon and AWS, and 44 MIT students from AeroAstro, System Design & Management, Supply Chain Management, Integrated Design & Management, MBA, MechE and others were in attendance.
The student organizers were: George Lordos, Anne-Marlene Rueede, Sarah Bentley, Kir Latyshev, Yana Charoenboonvivat, and Taimor Williams.
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Andrea Henshall, a retired Air Force special operations instructor pilot, recently became a Student Veterans of America Leadership Institute Fellow. Those accepted to the competitive program spend four days in Washington D.C. with fellow SVA chapter leaders. Fellows receive executive-level leadership training that enables them to serve and create a lasting community of impact.
Pictured from left to right are: Richard Delgado Jr. (Community Investor - Boeing Global Engagement and SVA mentor), Andrea Henshall, Jared Lyon (President and CEO of Student Veterans of America) and Maureen Elias (Deputy Chief of Staff of the US Department of Veterans Affairs and SVA mentor).
| AeroAstro alum Tom Imrich '69, SM '71 received The Museum of Flight’s Pathfinder Award. Imrich, now retired, had a distinguished aviation career, eventually becoming Boeing’s chief commercial test pilot. The Museum of Flight interviewed Imrich prior to his acceptance of the award - find the video here. | |
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On Oct. 28, AeroAstro showed up to Seaman's Lounge for the annual Halloween party hosted by GA^3 in some seriously out-of-this-world costumes. Attendees enjoyed pizza, popcorn, pumpkin decorating, cotton candy, and giant connect-four. MakerWorkshop hosted "Pumpkin carving with power tools" outside on the lawn during the party.
View all of the photos from the party and pumpkin carving here!
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More than 40 students enjoyed a weekend of hiking and campfires on a trip to the MIT Camelot Cabin in New Hampshire, hosted by GA^3! | | | | | |
