MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative’s 2022 microgravity flight features lunar-specific payloads in advance of the upcoming To the Moon To Stay Mission, and record participation from departments across MIT, including the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, CSAIL, Architecture, and the Media Lab.  

Hero image caption: Michelle Lin, a graduate student in MIT’s department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, floats while demonstrating Physical Instinct In Microgravity, which uses a wearable sensor system garment to measure proprioceptive adaptation to microgravity. Credit: Steve Boxall/ZERO-G

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On May 20 this year, MIT researchers and outside collaborators conducted a variety of experiments—with project topics ranging from autonomous self-assembly and zero-g fluid management, to arts and crafts in space, fashion wear and suits for space travel, to virtual reality systems in weightless environments—during the fifth annual microgravity flight hosted by the MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). A total of 16 projects were aboard the flight, which was chartered through the ZERO-G Research Program out of Pease Airport (Portsmouth, New Hampshire).    

Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab and a veteran microgravity flier with thousands of parabolas under her belt, joined the flight and praised the work being done by the SEI and colleagues to help prepare humanity for future planetary missions. "This cross-MIT/SEI effort is really a highlight and culmination for the end of the academic year,” Newman said. “These photos really capture the magic, depth, and joy of isolated, confined, and extreme environments (ICE) and microgravity." 

Of the 25 total participants, 20 student researchers attended and represented several MIT departments (including the Media Lab, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Architecture, and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), as well as multiple external entities such as the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program, the Draper Fellow Program, the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Northeastern University, and Yale University’s School of Architecture.  

“This year’s flight cohort was our most diverse yet, both in terms of organizations represented and gravity levels requested, which reflects SEI’s goal of democratizing access to space,” said Sean Auffinger, who serves as Mission Integrator for the SEI.

The class that accompanies the flight, Prototyping Our Space Future (MAS.838 / 16.88), is traditionally taught in the fall semester by Ariel Ekblaw, SEI founder and director, and the Media Lab’s Responsive Environment group head Joseph Paradiso; this year, however, Jeffrey Hoffman (Professor of the Practice within MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics) joined Ekblaw and Paradiso as a co-instructor of the course for the first time.   

The MIT AeroAstro department had a strong showing this year, sending seven students on the flight. Two such researchers, AeroAstro PhD students Cody Paige and Regina A. Moreno, developed and tested a project to investigate lunar gravity (⅙ G). The parabolas executed during the flight simulate a few different types of gravity, namely Martian, lunar, and microgravity, in short, 20-second bursts; most projects from past flights (including this year’s) collect data during the lunar parabolas, but only as an ancillary part to the experiment. 

Paige and Moreno’s project combined the work of several MIT groups preparing for lunar missions in the near future with a novel light detection and ranging (LiDAR) camera approach for mapping the moon’s surface (Capturing the Moon) and a dust collection and analysis project out of the Media Lab’s Space Enabled group. 

A few more projects that highlight the breadth and diversity of the research sent up this year include the Personalized Performance-Optimization Platform (P-POP), led by research scientist Nataliya Kosmyna of the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group, as well as two projects that continued to build on data gathered during last year’s flights: The Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit, invented by Professor Newman, was flown and tested by lead PhD student and investigator Rachel Bellisle from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (and who is also a Draper Fellow), and Stochastic Self-Assembly via Magnetically Programmed Materials, led by Martin Nisser of MIT CSAIL. 

For the full list of projects and other related info, refer to this 2022 flight recap post on the MIT Media Lab website.