Welcome to the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative’s course on project development, prototyping, and deployment readiness for parabolic flights.
This course supports an annually chartered research flight. Admitted student teams will be offered project-deployment slots on the Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative’s Spring 2019 parabolic flight. We're opening a call for projects and people to fly! All ideas are welcome, across the spectrum of art, science, engineering, design and community engagement.
This course will cover three main topic areas: rapid prototyping and engineering skills to prepare projects for operation in microgravity; logistics, training, and safety pre-approval steps to meet flight readiness requirements and pass a TRR (Technical Readiness Review); creative and technical lenses for the future of space exploration, exploring the Media Lab’s “theories of change” and MIT parabolic flight research examples across Science, Engineering, Art, Design, and Ethics and across departments.
Please refer to the Syllabus below for course topic and schedule details, and to the Admissions Criteria pub (under Home tab) for details on the application process. Each student will be expected to maintain a Pub project page, documenting prototype progress throughout the class.
Questions? Please send a note to zerogravity at media dot mit dot edu
Zero gravity flights generate short, 20-30 second periods of alternating microgravity and hypergravity by following a parabolic flight path, all while remaining at normal "cruising" altitudes. Our flight will include 20 such parabolas, with a mix of lunar, martian and zero gravity. This is a rare opportunity to experience true weightlessness and varying gravities without going into orbit! The company we've chartered with (ZERO-G) provides the zero gravity research flights for NASA, and has flown everything from MIT research payloads to Stephen Hawking!
Looking for information on the Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative’s fall 2017 flight?
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