SETG: Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes
Performance Period : May 2015 to April 2021 Faculty Investigator : Prof. Maria T. Zuber (PI, MIT); Prof. Gary Ruvkun (Co-PI, MGH), Prof. Christopher E. Carr (Science PI, MIT/Georgia Tech) Project Status : Completed Collaborators: Robert Doebler (Clarmont Biosolutions LLC), Michael Finney (self) and numerous other contributors, students, and staff. High School Interns: Jonathan Borowsky…
Metabolism & Aging: Improving health and lifespan on Earth and beyond
Faculty Investigator : Dr. Christopher E. Carr Project Status : Completed Working with colleagues at the Massachusetts General Hospital and elsewhere, mainly from 2005-2020, we have identified conserved regulators of aging, fat accumulation, metabolism, stress resistance, and reproductive longevity. Our work has identified approaches to improve healthspan and lifespan in aging populations as well as a deeper understanding of the evolutionary…
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Human Performance Extreme Environments & Extravehicular Activity (EVA)
Faculty Investigator : Dr. Christopher E. Carr Project Status : Completed What are the limits of human performance on Earth and in space? How can we augment them? Our work has involved: Characterizing the energetics and optimality of gait under Earth gravity and in reduced gravity Developing new space suit technologies Optimizing path planning for extravehicular activity (EVA) Wearable computing & situational awareness This work…
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NASA VIPER: Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover
Project Sponsor : NASA Start Date : Launch in late 2024 Faculty Investigator : Dr. Masatoshi “Toshi” Hirabayashi Project Status : Ongoing The NASA/VIPER is a rover mission to be deployed at Mons Mouton, near the lunar south pole for directly investigating water ice and other volatiles hosted on the surface and subsurface of the…
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DART: Double Asteroid Redirection Test
Project Sponsor : NASA Start Date : 11/24/2021 Faculty Investigator : Dr. Masatoshi “Toshi” Hirabayashi Project Status : Completed DART was NASA’s first planetary defense mission dedicated to demonstrating asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion through kinetic impact. DART spacecraft successfully impacted Dimorphos, the secondary component of the near-Earth binary asteroid system (65803)…
Lunar Flashlight Propulsion System
Project Sponsor : NASA Faculty Investigator : Dr. Glenn Lightsey Project Status : Complete Working with our partners at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Lab, Georgia Tech’s SSDL is designing and building a new CubeSat green propellant propulsion system to perform orbit insertion for NASA’s Lunar Flashlight which will be deployed on…
The Ranging And Nanosatellite Guidance Experiment (RANGE)
Project Sponsor : Terra Bella (formerly Skybox) University Cubesat Partnership Start Date : 08/25/2015 Faculty Investigator : Dr. Brian Gunter Project Status : Currently in orbit RANGE consisting of two 1.5 U cubesats, seeks to demonstrate an order-of-magnitude improvement in absolute orbital position knowledge compared with traditional CubeSats and inter-satellite distance measurement with mm-level precision…
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GT-1
Project Sponsor : Internal Research and Development Start Date : 08/12/2019 Faculty Investigator : Dr. Glenn Lightsey Project Status : Deployed from ISS on Feb 3, 2022 GT-1 is a 1.14 kg 1U CubeSat with experimental deployable solar panels and a deployable UHF radio antenna. The GT-1 mission demonstrates a rapid cradle-to-grave lifecycle of a…
The Tethering And Ranging Mission Of The Georgia Institute Of Technology (TARGIT)
Project Sponsor : NASA Start Date : 08/15/2016 Faculty Investigator : Dr. Brian Gunter Project Status : Deployed from ISS on January 26, 2022 The solar-powered TARGIT is a 3U CubeSat that houses a compact laser altimetry system capable of delivering accurate topographic data (down to the centimeter) from as far away as 10 kilometers…
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SunRISE Propulsion System
Project Sponsor : Utah State University Space Dynamics Lab (SDL) Faculty Investigator : Dr. Glenn Lightsey Project Status : Complete SSDL is designing and building six additively manufactured cold gas propulsion systems for a formation of small satellites that will launch into a geocentric supersynchronous orbit in 2023. The propulsion systems will be used for…
Lunar Flashlight Operations
Project Sponsor : NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Start Date : 08/01/2023 Faculty Investigator : Dr. Glenn Lightsey Project Status : Complete Lunar Flashlight is a 6U technology demonstration mission that was launched with the aim of mapping ice in permanently shadowed regions around the lunar south pole. Lunar Flashlight is a JPL 6U CubeSat mission…