Founded in 2016 and now in our eighth year, we set our sights on space. The Space Exploration Initiative has since grown to 50+ graduate students, staff, and faculty and charters an annual ZERO-G parabolic flight for up to 15 projects and 25 researchers! This year's flight flew on May 14, 2024. The projects shown below were tested over many microgravity parabolas (including two martian and two lunar parabolas). This mission included participation from several departments at MIT and outside collaborators from across the globe in our mission to democratize access to space; this mission is a core milestone in the schedule of iterative microgravity testing (parabolic flights, suborbital launches, ISS launches) that the Space Exploration Initiative undertakes throughout the year.
The Initiative unites engineers, scientists, artists, and designers to prototype our space future. We hope you explore and enjoy the rich diversity of research perspectives in the projects shown below. Stay tuned for flight results and our research publications!
As a added bonus for this year's flight, the researchers were treated to an additional seventeen parabolas beyond the normal twenty as the pilots completed some additional training.