MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics | December 2025 | | |
MIT will be closed for winter break starting Tuesday, December 23. We’ll see you in 2026!
Explore a wide variety of offerings during the 2026 Independent Activities Period (IAP) – courses are open to all students, staff, faculty, and alumni!
The Roundup will return in February 2026.
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The Roundup is a monthly newsletter to keep the AeroAstro community up-to-date on research, community news, and important happenings across the department and MIT. Explore past issues of the Roundup on our website.
| | After 40 years of dedicated service, AeroAstro celebrated Helen Halaris’ retirement. Helen served as Program Administrator for the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium alongside Director and Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman. | | GA³ broke into the end-of-year celebrations at Flat Top Johnny’s, cueing up rounds of pool and festive music. | | AeroAstro staff took part in the season of giving with the annual Yankee Swap. | | |
Spot Awards: Huge thank you to Eunice Nganga and Karen Bruce for their extra support in December. Have someone you would like to recognize? Submit a nomination any time (log-in required) – Spot Awards are open to everyone!
This January, check out the webinars provided by MyLife Services on Finding Belonging.
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Prof. Sara Seager among the recipients of the 2025 NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Award for her ongoing research exploring the chemistries that might support life on Venus and other extraterrestrial environments.
The Electroaerodynamic (EAD) propulsion team, including Arthur Brown, Nicolás Gómez Vega, Nicholas Perovich, Hector Xu, and former Prof. Steven Barrett, were granted a second full patent for their surface-integrated EAD thrusters.
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The AeroAstro Comm Lab provides 1-1 peer coaching sessions for all forms of technical communication. Make an appointment to improve the effectiveness of your next paper, poster, presentation and more!
New Fellow Recruitment
The AeroAstro Comm Lab is seeking new Fellows with a wide diversity of skills to join our team this spring! AeroAstro-affiliated graduate students and postdocs, including international students, who plan to be at MIT through at least spring 2027 are encouraged to apply to be a Communication Fellow. This paid (up to $3,000/year!) position is a great way to help your peers and to develop your own communication skills. Becoming a Comm Fellow counts towards your professional development requirement!
You do not need to already be an expert in technical communication to apply. This is a great professional development opportunity through training, mentoring, resource creation, teaching, and more for anyone interested in improving their communication skills. Applications open at the end of December and close in early February. Please see our website for more information and the application.
Upcoming events:
| | NASA astronaut and Course XVI alum E. Michael Fincke called in from the ISS Cupola to chat with first-year students. He may be a long way from his East Campus dorm, but never far from our hearts!
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on a Science Strategy for the Human Exploration of Mars, co-chaired by Prof. Dava Newman, released a landmark report outlining the scientific case for future crewed Mars missions. | | |
Théo Rulko (ISN) presented his work on a multi-physics approach to predicting oxidation transitions and failure in silicon carbide spacecraft heat shields at the 2025 Ablation Workshop in Las Cruces, NM.
The inaugural AeroAstro Professional Areas Showcase brought undergraduate students together with faculty, TAs, and department leadership for a review of the Professional Area Subjects (PAS) that form the backbone of Course XVI’s undergraduate curriculum.
| | Christopher Kwon (necstlab) led the detailed engineering work on HAVEN (Hazard-response Aero-deployable Vehicle for Emergency Nominal re-entry), a speculative space architectures project that imagines an inflatable emergency “lifeboat” for future space stations and reentry to Earth. The project was displayed in the MIT Media Lab lobby. | | Course 16.00, Introduction to Aerospace and Design, was successfully revived this year under the leadership of Prof. Olivier de Weck, Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman, Senior Technical Instructor Dave Robertson, and TA Jonathan Stoppani. The course culminated in the successful launch of high atmospheric stratospheric balloons by five teams, reaching altitudes between 70,000 and 105,000 feet. | | Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | | | | |
