Prof. Sara Seager and her team have organized three missions to Venus to search for signs of life in the clouds surrounding the planet, reports David Axe for the Daily Beast. Each mission “would fling a probe into the toxic planet’s acidic atmosphere and collect data on the presence, or absence, of something resembling life,” explains Axe.
Prof. Julien de Wit speaks with Newsweek reporter Ed Browne about the wealth of information that the James Webb telescope will be providing about the universe. "In terms of information content, we're pretty much going from listening to the radio, to having television," said de Wit.
Prof. Wanying Kang and her colleagues have found that “the way ice covers the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus suggests that the oceans trapped beneath it may be only a little less salty than Earth’s oceans,” reports By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. “The researchers found that saltier subsurface oceans correspond to thicker ice on a planet’s poles than over its equator and vice versa for less salty water,” writes Padavic-Callaghan.
Reporting for The Boston Globe, Hanna Kreuger highlights a graph documenting the atmospheric conditions of the exoplanet WASP-96b, which NASA included in its first release of images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Describing it as “perhaps the image that showcases Webb’s greatest triumph,” Krueger notes that the graph was created using an equation developed by Prof. Sara Seager. Seager and her team will use the telescope to peer into TRAPPIST-1e, an exoplanet widely considered to be potentially Earth-like and habitable, adds Krueger.
As the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released on Tuesday, showcasing the deepest view of the universe ever, CBS Boston spoke with Prof. Julien de Wit about the importance of the moment. “It’s groundbreaking. It’s like going from listening to the radio to suddenly being able to watch television,” says de Wit. “Further down the road, we may be able to see if planets are habitable, if some of these planets have signs of life one way or the other. There are so many things we’re going to discover thanks to it.”
Prof. Robert Simcoe and his team will receive 100 hours with the new James Webb Space Telescope to look at some of the first stars and galaxies to form after the Big Bang, reports David Bienick for WCVB. “I’m tremendously excited,” says Simcoe. “We have been preparing for this moment since 2016, knowing that we were going to have time and starting to prepare our observations, and waiting for the telescope to be ready.”
Prof. Benjamin Weiss speaks with Forbes contributor Bruce Dorminey about his latest co-authored paper detailing new paleomagnetic measurements of samples of Antarctic meteorites. “Our study shows that the solar nebula – the cloud of gas and dust out of which our solar system formed, dissipated very quickly (within less than 1.5 million years) after having lasted for 3 million years,” Weiss tells Dorminey.
Ariel Ekblaw, director of the Space Exploration Initiative and founder of the Aurelia Institute, speaks with Fast Company reporter Rachael Zisk about accessibility needs for human spaceflight and the next generation of space stations. “The goal of democratizing access to space is to allow more people around the world to see themselves in that future,” says Ekblaw.
Astronomers have identified two Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star 33 light years away, reports Jamie Carter for Forbes. “Both planets in this system are each considered among the best targets for atmospheric study because of the brightness of their star,” explains postdoc Michelle Kunimoto.
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights multiple MIT research projects, including MIT Space Exploration Initiative’s TESSERAE, CSAIL’s Robocraft and the recent development of miniature flying robotic drones.
An MIT Media Lab team led by Ariel Ekblaw, director of the Space Exploration Initiative, has developed a robotic swarm of self-assembling robotic tiles that could be used for future in-orbit construction, reports Eric Mack for CNET. “If all goes well, MIT and [Ariel] Ekblaw hope that the technology will eventually be used for geodesic dome habitats beyond Earth, microgravity concert halls and space cathedrals,” writes Mack.
Ariel Ekblaw, director of MIT’s Space Exploration Initiative, speaks with Denise Chow at NBC News about the increased opportunities in space and satellite research in recent decades. “If you were a Ph.D. student in the prior domain, it could have taken years and you may never have had a chance to actually deploy your research on the International Space Station,” said Ekblaw. “But now, within four to six years, we might do three or four missions to the International Space Station within that time.”
NASA astronaut Raja Chari SM ’01 and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer performed a spacewalk to help maintain the crucial cooling systems aboard the International Space Station (ISS), reports Ed Browne for Newsweek. “Spacewalks are an important part of life on the space station,” writes Browne. “Also called an extravehicular activity (EVA), a spacewalk is when an astronaut or cosmonaut gets out of the ISS whilst wearing a pressurized and oxygenated space suit that protects them from the vacuum of space.”
Prof. Sara Seager has been awarded one of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) awards, which will help fund her project aimed at sending an orbiter that deploys an inflatable probe to Venus, as part of an effort to search for habitability or signs of life, reports Ramin Skibba for Wired. “This search for signs of life on Venus has been around for a long time, and now the stars are aligned to start taking it seriously,” says Seager.
MIT astronomers have observed the dark side of a football-shaped exoplanet known as WASP-121b and found that it may have metal clouds made up of iron, corundum, and titanium, reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo. “The vastly different temperatures on either side of the planet make a dynamic environment for the various molecules floating around the atmosphere,” writes Schultz. “In the daytime, water gets ripped apart by the nearly 5,000° Fahrenheit heat and blown to the night side of the planet by 11,000-mile-per-hour winds.”