MIT AeroAstro - Space Systems Laboratory - Building Systems for Space from Design to Operation

[Music] being part of the MIT Space Systems laboratory provides incredible opportunities I don't think there's very many places that you can actually work to send your algorithms and control schemes to space to test to be able to interact with International Space Station it's a remarkable opportunities Space Systems it encompasses any field of science or engineering that you can think of we work with computers with mechanics with thermal engineering propulsion we specialize but we can't ignore or leave out any of the subsystems you always have something new you didn't challenging to work on even if you've done something once but the next time you do it it's a it's a little bit different and the environment in space is not one that's really I mean easy to work with so there's always new problems to solve and I think that's what you know I love about it the most the Department of aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT is in the School of Engineering and here we really cover two bases one is airplanes Aeronautics as well as spacecraft so what I like to think of is we're engineering but we defy gravity you can work with the International Space Station you can build and fly your own UAVs you work with astronauts they really come out of their education now with a full experience of impacting the aerospace field the MIT space laboratory is in the Department of aeronautics and Astronautics and we really focus on the space side we are the expert laboratory in systems engineering putting all these complex systems together and teaching students what that means and how to make them work ultimately in space we give students here the opportunity to be hands-on in the hardware to the breakfast project where they're gonna send out hardware to an asteroid through space for two-and-a-half years to Speers where they're gonna send their hardware up on station these students are getting to work with the leaders in the aerospace industry on real hardware say the art technology with education is something we really need to marry and we do that to our capstone class where students get to design new technology that surprisingly actually we've been able to fly in orbit on station and to interplanetary missions we started this concept at a time truly innovative the first ones to ever do it cdio conceived design implement operate we began that in 1999 since then we've done the class about ten times and at least four of them have gone to space you get to experience what it's really like on a real high profile NASA mission you have to meet all those requirements that the other instruments have to meet and so that whole experience is really invaluable in teaching you what real aerospace engineering is like my involvement with the projects that we have here at the SSL goes all the way from hard work level actually crimping cables screwing on satellite parts all the way up to writing code for it from the start I've been working with developing algorithms that we can test our architecture in space we interact with the astronauts live over video feed and they unpackage our software load into the system and run our tests being able to be a part of what is the whole picture gonna look like how are we going to develop the architecture meet requirements and I think these are really important skills I need to be developed and I think I can take into my future career we as a lab have three main focus areas on the one side we work with computer models of how to develop space mission then we do a lot of ground test best we build things in the ground that we test in the laboratory a proof of concept can they work the third step is things that go to space for example our sphere satellites that are aboard International Space Station what spheres is is it is a testament MIT decided to use the space station not to test a complete mission but to create a testing environment to do microgravity research in space mit has operated over ninety test sessions doing research that goes from what we call formation flight having satellites moved together in a coordinated fashion making two satellites talk to each other autonomously doing things like tether formation when there's a string between a satellites and they're flying together keeping that tether under tension the streets program began at the MIT statistics laboratory as a class in 1999 in 2006 it got up to the space station in 2010 NASA and the DoD made the spheres part of the ISS National Laboratory making it truly a facility for everybody began MIT access is an x-ray instrument that's on the osiris-rex spacecraft the Cyrus Rex spacecraft is going to explore this asteroid Bennu nASA has put a little bit of money aside and said let's see if universities can come up with a good instrument idea and we started developing the rexes instrument back in 2012 breakfast is going to look at the asteroid in the x-ray regime and tell us what the asteroid is made out of so does it have iron sulfur or magnesium in the regolith which is the dirt that's on the outside of the asteroid I start on a rexis when rexis was part of the undergrad capstone class and really the experience that I got in that class was so exciting that I decided to continue on on rexis Rothman masters and now my PhD work on the rexes project students did everything we designed rexis we designed a test program we implemented a test program we physically built the hardware as well as contributing to the scientific analysis of our data as an x-ray spectrometer it will be the first instrument to get a look at the x-ray spectra that comes off the asteroid which gives us a unique insight into the elemental composition asteroid and so we're getting data that no one's ever gotten before the spheres program is educated several thousand students from all the way as young as eleven years old we made a competition that is based on the students programming a player for an autonomous satellite the best players in simulation get to send their code up to the space station students can say I can send things to space I can send my software to space Space Systems lab in star lab or in a nice sweet spot we work on missions that are small enough where where we can hold them all in our in our hands and in our heads but they're impactful and they fly it's constantly humbling to be around faculty members that are really excellent what they do whether they're NASA Chief Technologist or former secretaries of the Air Force just be able to learn from these people day to day make aero-astro at MIT what it is all my life when I was a kid or throughout undergrad I was thought of MIT as being like this super cool place and which cutting-edge research was done now that I'm here I can actually feel that your research can have a tremendous impact you

Channel: WebsEdge Science

Views: 10,980

Rating: 4.9390864 out of 5

Keywords: IAC TV, IAC, International Astronautical Congress, IAC 2017, IAFASTRO, Astronautical Engineering, innovation, Adelaide, space startups, Australia, Space, Science, Systems for Space, aerospace-related systems, aerospace, aerospace program, MIT, Space Systems Laboratory, MIT AeroAstro, AeroAstro, MIT SSL, SPHERES program, nano-satellites, REXIS project, Osiris-Rex mission

Id: Q5EprrdB330

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2017