Research — MIT Media Lab

ELI: Electronic Life-detection Instrument

Life on Mars, if it exists, could have been transferred between Earth and Mars due to meteorite impacts. The Search for Extra-Terrestrial...

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Microgravity Rowing

In microgravity, the removal of constant loading on the skeleton leads to loss of bone density and muscle mass. In order to counteract th...

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Orbit Weaver Suit

The Orbit Weaver Suit for zero gravity was designed by Media Lab Director's Fellow Andrea Lauer in collaboration with ...

Moon Village

In 2015, the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), Jan Wörner, introduced the concept of the “Moon Village.” Inspired by t...

Zero Gravity Flight 2019

This mission included participation from several departments at MIT and outside collaborators from across the globe.

Persian Domes for Human Space Exploration on Mars

The Lut Desert of Iran is one of the most similar regions to Mars. Close to that area, there are vernacular adobe architectures that are ...

Sustainability rating for space could help keep junk out of the sky

Danielle Wood discusses the satellite technology research and other work underway in her Space Enabled research group.

Designs on the sky

Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellow Prathima Muniyappa uses the transformative power of design to empower marginalized indigenous communities.

Theme | Wearable Biotech Enhancement

Lab on Body, Synthetic Biology, and Bio-Digital Systems for Health and Human Enhancement

WIRED25: Stories of people who are racing to save us

Humanity is facing thorny problems on all fronts. These folks are working to solve them—and trying to avoid the unintended consequences.

Space pianos and upside-down shoes: innovations for life in space

Hairstyles, musical instruments and gardening all change in zero gravity, scientist Sands Fish says.

Collaboration is key for the future of space exploration, HubWeek scientists say

Ariel Ekblaw presented designs for self-assembling architecture to create habitats for people living and working in low-gravity environments

HubWeek 2019 celebrates five years of connecting MIT, Boston, and the world

Greater Boston’s annual festival of ideas finds new avenues for celebrating and connecting innovators.

MIT engineer develops new way to improve your body movement

Media Lab spinoff company Figur8 has developed a cost-effective, portable system to measure and track human motion.

MIT creates battery-free sensor for deep-sea and extraterrestrial exploration

An underwater internet of things monitoring the effects of climate change or sampling waters on distant planets

A battery-free sensor for underwater exploration

Submerged system uses the vibration of “piezoelectric” materials to generate power and send and receive data.

The Telemetron

Today, the environments that humans occupy in space are designed for survival. Humans are carefully shuttled to and from space, and durin...

Accessibility of the microgravity research ecosystem

For decades, the International Space Station (ISS) has operated as a bastion of international cooperation and a unique testbed for microg...

How a robotic tail could help future space travelers

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are developing technology for a day when amateur astronauts travel into orbit.

Honorable Mention: Moon Village, a vibrant hub in the unknown

Innovation knows no geographic bounds in this collaboration, including research by Labber Valentina Sumini.

Space exploration and the age of the Anthropocosmos

Joi Ito calls for responsible stewardship of the commons beyond our planet.

Maiden Flight

Maiden Flight is an autonomous biological laboratory environment designed for studying the impact of space flight on the sole reproductiv...

Space Health Wearables

Designing Wearables for Space Exploration

A new grading system could deter satellite operators from junking up space

Rating efforts to keep Earth orbit sustainable

Consortium to develop “space sustainability” rating system

The World Economic Forum has selected a consortium of companies, universities and agencies to develop a system to rate the sustainability of

Telepresent Drawings in Space

This project asks, how can we transmit experiences across space and time? The launching point of the project is to create a drawing that ...

Creating a Space Sustainability Rating

A team led by the Space Enabled group, ESA, and the World Economic Forum will address waste in Earth’s orbit

Six suborbital research payloads from MIT fly to space and back

Space Exploration Initiative research aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard experiment capsule crossed the Karman line for three minutes

Six suborbital research payloads fly on Blue Origin New Shepard

The projects on board the Media Lab's first suborbital rocket flight

TESSERAE: Suborbital launch test

On May 2nd, 2019 we launched three TESSERAE v2 hardware tiles into space and back! They rode to just over 100km (past the Karman line) on...

The Future's Coming: Why we need to prepare for sci-fi tomorrows today

Teleportation may have to wait.

Big Ocean, Big Data

More ocean data has been collected in the last two years than in all previous years combined, and we are on a path to continue to break t...

Spatial Flux: Body and architecture in space

Structurally, zero gravity means that we do not have to contend with architecture's greatest arch-nemesis, gravity. This opens up a new w...

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ZeroN: Levitated Tangible Interface

Imagine a physical object that floats through the air, unconstrained by gravity, which can move freely to display the motion of a planet ...

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Space is poised for explosive growth. Let’s get it right.

Before low-earth orbit is clogged with hotels, satellite traffic, and debris, we should plan for the extra-planetary community we want.

Self-Assembling Space Habitats: TESSERAE design and mission architecture

Ekblaw, Ariel, and Joseph Paradiso. “ Self-Assembling Space Habitats:TESSERAE Technology and Mission Architecture for Zero-g Construction ” To appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference (2019).

Microgravity research after the International Space Station

Researchers say new facilities in space should be available to scientists from any country.

Orbit Weaver

Gravity anchors all existence on Earth.It pulls a chaotic world to one single point in every moment of life. Even though gravity is every...

The architect designing self-assembling habitats for space

Tomorrow’s space explorers won’t be able to pack traditional, heavy building materials for their missions.

Changing how we build satellites could do more than reduce space junk

Earth is surrounded by a cloud of defunct satellites that can be hazardous to working spacecraft—but it doesn't have to be that way.

Uncharted worlds

Descending into the dark sea is like exploring deep space.

Self-Assembling Space Architecture: tessellated shell structures for space habitats

Ekblaw, A. and Paradiso, J.A., "Self-assembling Space Architecture: tessellated shell structures for space habitats," In AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum, Smart/Adaptable Deployable Structures (p. 0481).

MIT’s zero-gravity musical instrument provides a soundtrack for space travel

The Telemetron was created in response to a call from the MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative.

A musical instrument for astronauts and other news

BBC Click's Nick Kwek looks at some of the best technology stories of the week.

Earthrise, 50 years later

Thoughts from the Media Lab's Space Enabled group and Space Exploration Initiative

TESSERAE: Self-Assembling Shell Structures for Space Exploration

Ekblaw, Ariel and Joseph Paradiso. "TESSERAE: self-assembling shell structures for space exploration." In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium of the International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures: Extra Planetary Architecture, p. 317 (2018).

Physio FreeFall

This project seeks to examine the effects of altered gravity on an individual’s physiology during parabolic flight. Specifically, we will...

Curating the human experience of space—present, future, and fiction

Xin Liu discusses the Space Exploration Initiative's upcoming arts exhibition at Ars Electronica

Science Fiction for tomorrow's day to day

Ariel Ekblaw speaks at Sónar+D

Making Music in Space

Nicole L'Huillier speaks at Sónar+D

The Telemetron is a post-Earth musical instrument designed for zero gravity

The Telemetron generates musical compositions using gyroscopic “chimes.”

Project TESSERAE, a Self-Assembling Space Architecture

The TESSERAE project is a design experiment in imagining how to bring the concept of geodesic domes from Earth into orbit.

MIT's 'Orbit Weaver' turns astronauts into spiders

A new MIT Media Lab device takes a page from Spiderman to help astronauts navigate while weightless.

Rhapsody in Zero G

Reimagining research for life in space

Vomit Comet Physiology: Autonomic Changes in Novice Flyers

Johnson, K.T., Taylor, S., Fedor, S., Jaques, N., Chen, W., Picard, R.W. "Vomit Comet Physiology: Autonomic Changes in Novice Flyers." Proceedings of the International Conference of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2018.

TNW 2018: Designing Our Sci-Fi Space Future

For more on the Space Exploration Initiative @TNW2018, you can read the full article, "Making Star Wars a Reality through Design Thinking...

"Life, uh, finds a way"

Biomimicry looks to living organisms to create the future of sustainable engineering.

Inventing Smells for Space: A chemistry, design, and R&D collaboration with IFF

A chemistry, design, and R&D collaboration with International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc.

A guide to daily life on Mars

What would daily life be like on the Red Planet?

Six space technologies we can use to improve life on Earth

Danielle Wood's TED Talk

“Life, uh, finds a way”—Applying lessons from evolution to go to Mars

Biomimicry looks to living organisms to create the future of sustainable engineering.

Self-Assembling Space Structures: buckminsterfullerene sensor nodes

Ekblaw, Ariel, and Joseph Paradiso. "Self-assembling Space Structures: Buckminsterfullerene Sensor Nodes." In 2018 AIAA SciTech / AHS Adaptive Structures Conference, p. 0565. 2018.

Scratch in Space

The Scratch Team invited young people from around the world to create Scratch projects designed specifically to be played in zero gr...

Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes (SETG)

The widespread synthesis of common organic building blocks in space could have biased life beyond Earth towards chemical similarities to ...

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Social Robots in Space: Initial Explorations

Can we enable social connectivity between astronauts and people on Earth through an embodied agent?Astronauts actively communicate with t...

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