Sheila Widnall: A Lifetime Exploring the Unknown at MIT and in the U.S. Air Force
During 64 years at MIT, the Institute Professor Emerita has been a trailblazer in aerospace and the U.S. military, and a changemaker for women in…
Aeronautics
How Airplanes Counteract Luminous Plasma Phenomenon, St. Elmo’s Fire, During Thunderstorms
On the ground, windy conditions strengthen these electrical flashes, but new experiments tell a different story for flying objects. At the height of a thunderstorm,…
MIT Engineers Demonstrate a New Kind of Airplane Wing
A team of engineers has built and tested a radically new kind of airplane wing, assembled from hundreds of tiny identical pieces. The wing can…
First Air-to-Air Images of Supersonic Shockwave Interaction Captured
“We never dreamt that it would be this clear, this beautiful.” Physical Scientist J.T. Heineck of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California gets…
Creating Predictable Patterns from Unpredictable Carbon Nanotubes
Integrating nanoscale fibers such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into commercial applications, from coatings for aircraft wings to heat sinks for mobile computing, requires them to…
Shark Skin-Inspired Designs Improve Aerodynamic Performance
To build more aerodynamic machines, researchers are drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: the ocean. A team of evolutionary biologists and engineers at Harvard University,…
New Chip Design Method May Result in Miniature Smart Drones
A team of engineers at MIT has developed a method for designing efficient computer chips may get miniature smart drones off the ground. In recent…
NASA Runs First-Ever Test of New “Propulsor” Jet Engine Tech
Aerospace engineers believe they can reduce fuel consumption by embedding an aircraft’s engines into the boundary layer to ingesting the boundary layer air flow. Car,…
New “Morphing” Wing Could Enable More Efficient Plane Flight
Engineers at MIT and NASA have developed a new kind of bendable, “morphing” wing that could enable more efficient plane manufacturing and flight. When the…
MIT Aerospace Engineers Develop Carbon Nanotube “Stitches” to Strengthen Composites
Using carbon nanotube “stitches,” aerospace engineers from MIT have found a way to strengthen composites, helping make airplane frames lighter and more damage-resistant. The newest…
NASA Invests in Next Stage of Visionary Technology Development
Using a peer-review process that evaluated innovativeness and technical viability, NASA has selected eight technology proposals for investment that have the potential to transform future…
NASA to Begin Historic New Era of X-Plane Research
NASA’s aeronautical innovators are preparing to put in the sky an array of new experimental aircraft, each intended to carry on the legacy of demonstrating…
NASA to Build a Quieter Supersonic Passenger Jet
NASA’s award of a contract for the preliminary design of a “low boom” flight demonstration aircraft brings the return of supersonic passenger air travel is…
Refueling at the Moon May Be the Best Option for a Piloted Mission to Mars
New research from MIT shows that stopping at the moon may be the best option for a piloted mission to Mars, revealing that fueling up…
Distributed Electric Propulsion May Usher in a New Era of Flight
NASA scientists believe distributed electric propulsion is set to usher in a new era of aviation, allowing engineers to do things that they have wanted…
NASA Begins Testing Electric Propulsion Technologies
Over the next several months, NASA researchers will perform ground testing on the electric propulsion technologies from the Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology project. The…
New Robotic Platform Could Take Space Exploration to New Heights
A team of scientists from Stanford, MIT and JPL have developed an autonomous system for exploring moons and asteroids that could help take space exploration…
Flying Squirrels Can Adjust Speed and Flight Dynamically
Flying squirrels, a tribe of 44 species of the family Sciuridae, might look reckless as they fling themselves through the air, but scientists have reported…