MIT student teams win top honors in NASA competition

Three MIT student teams comprising 35 students from eight departments won five top awards at NASA's 2026 RASC-AL competition. ECLIPSE took first place overall for designing a lunar power grid with 99.995% uptime using solar masts and buried microreactors. MELIORA won second place for a communications and navigation constellation scaling from 3 to 23 satellites, providing 100+ Mbps links and 10-meter positioning accuracy for both the moon and Mars. CHEESEBURGER won its theme category for a five-payload robotic campaign to mine lunar regolith into oxygen, metals, and bricks. The three designs are intentionally integrated: ECLIPSE powers CHEESEBURGER's processing, and CHEESEBURGER's regolith handling helps shield ECLIPSE's reactors, all targeting NASA's planned permanent lunar south pole base in the early 2030s.

Nguồn: https://news.mit.edu/2026/interdisciplinary-mit-teams-design-power-communications-and-early-lunar-industries-win-top-0615. 8sync News chỉ tóm tắt và dẫn link; bản quyền nội dung thuộc tác giả và nguồn gốc.

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Blue Origin still does not know why New Glenn exploded but plans to fly again this year

Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp confirmed the company still does not know the root cause of the May 28 New Glenn rocket explosion, with early analysis pointing to the aft section of the first stage. The blast destroyed the launch pad's transporter-erector and lightning tower at Cape Canaveral. In response, Blue Origin is switching to a crane-based approach to stand the rocket upright, which is expected to speed up return-to-flight and improve launch cadence. Limp remains optimistic about flying again before end of 2026. The stakes are significant: New Glenn is critical to NASA's Artemis moon landing program targeting 2028, and Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite constellation deployment depends on it meeting an FCC deadline.

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