NASA Names Troy Asher Armstrong Flight Research Center Director
Published
THE STREAM
Across your feeds
A mix of topics and publishers, with recent articles first within each. Curated background stays in the stream; news uses a 90-day window. Missing dates are shown explicitly. Older collected articles remain available in Saved and Connections.
A soft robot could help doctors diagnose and treat disorders of the small intestine
MIT engineers designed a robotic enteroscope that can inch through the hard-to-reach small intestine, making biopsies and drug delivery easier.
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Global Climate Change: Understand Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation
Connect climate hazards with exposure and vulnerability, distinguish adaptation from mitigation and frame a useful local climate question.
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NIH–NASA QuSAFE Challenge
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3 Questions: Why infrastructure is entering a defining era
Professor Ali Jadbabaie describes how AI, digital transformation, climate change, and complex geopolitics are forcing engineers and policymakers to rethink how infrastructure is designed, built, and managed.
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Radio Telescope Antennas: How Arrays Make an Image
Understand baselines, resolution, sensitivity and missing spatial scales, then read an ALMA image with the right context.
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Envía tu nombre a Titán a bordo de la misión Dragonfly de la NASA
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Origami-based construction method yields lightweight, load-bearing structures on architectural scales
The modular approach could be used to erect emergency shelters or fabricate aerospace components more quickly and with less material than some techniques.
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WISE: How to Explore an Infrared Sky Survey
Find WISE archive images, compare infrared bands, choose between coadds and single exposures, and recognize common artifacts.
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Send Your Name to Titan Aboard NASA’s Dragonfly Mission
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At New York Climate Week 2026, MIT connects with a global network
A cross-section of the MIT community convened discussions on topics ranging from data centers and super pollutants to agriculture and education.
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Biogas: Understand Feedstocks, Upgrading and Climate Claims
Trace a biogas project from feedstock to end use, then assess gas treatment, methane losses, energy use, digestate and the alternative waste pathway.
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NASA’s ISAM State of Play: The Industry Standard for Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing
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Startup plans to rejuvenate the nuclear power industry with a new manufacturing approach
Founded by Jake Jurewicz ’14, SM ’15, Blue Energy aims to manufacture giant pieces of nuclear reactors at shipyards and ship them on barges for final assembly.
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Security Robots: AI Advances, Capabilities and Limits
Understand how patrol robots combine navigation, sensors and AI, what recent systems add, and where human judgment remains essential.
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NASA’s Hubble Marks Way for Roman Space Telescope
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Fostering community amid Kendall Square’s innovation
The 18th annual Kendall Square Association Annual Meeting explored how new technologies could be a force for shared prosperity in society.
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Comets: What You See and How to Plan an Observation
Understand comet tails and brightness, use an ephemeris for your location, and plan a realistic night-sky observation.
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Ghostly Cat’s Head Nebula Lurks Within Sight of NASA’s Hubble, Webb
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MIT spinout makes surgical stitching more like applying a sticky note
SanaHeal has developed a biologically compatible adhesive that sticks to wet tissues to simplify a variety of surgeries.
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Cloud Forests: Follow Fog, Rain and Water Through the Canopy
Understand cloud-forest water pathways and assess field or conservation claims using site conditions, a water budget and appropriately scoped evidence.
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Contractor to Civil Servant: NASA Welcomes Jared Spiers
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Enceladus: What Its Plumes Reveal About an Ocean World
Connect Cassini's plume measurements with ocean evidence, phosphorus and chemical energy, while distinguishing habitability from life detection.
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Researchers improve weather forecasts looking two to six weeks out
A new machine-learning approach broke records for weather forecasting for an important time frame in emergency planning.
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APOD: 29 October 2026 – The Horns of Venus
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Environmental Monitoring: From a Question to Useful Evidence
Plan a monitoring project with a defined decision, measurable indicator, sampling design, quality checks and a response process.
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Using AI to mitigate the growing environmental threat of data centers
By rethinking how large cloud computing systems operate, Associate Professor Christina Delimitrou seeks to make data centers more energy efficient.
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Arnab Strikes India
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Europa: Ocean Evidence, Ice-Shell Questions and Europa Clipper
Follow the evidence for Europa's ocean, understand ice-thickness uncertainty, and see which questions Europa Clipper can address.
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Planning system ensures a robot’s flight path will remain collision-free
This new method, called “SANDO,” could help disaster-response robots navigate dangerous, unknown environments.
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Green Roofs: Feasibility, Maintenance and Building Decisions
Prepare a green-roof feasibility brief covering building capacity, waterproofing, drainage, plant care and project-specific costs.
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Computational tools for society’s most complex challenges
Associate Professor Cathy Wu uses reinforcement learning to help map out improvements to transportation and other multifaceted systems.
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Infrared Telescopes: Wavelengths, Thermal Background and What Images Reveal
Compare infrared observations through wavelength, sensitivity and resolution, with examples from VISIR and Webb.
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Climate Action Learning Lab bridges research and policy for effective climate solutions
J-PAL North America’s Learning Lab supported a second cohort of U.S. government and nonprofit organizations in building and using rigorous evidence to advance effective decarbonization and adaptation strategies.
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Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Build a First Organizational Inventory
Define organizational boundaries, gather activity data and calculate a transparent first emissions estimate with clear limits.
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Powered by muscle cells, a paper-thin robot swims through watery maze
MIT engineers’ new aquabot offers a way to design small, efficient “biohybrid” robots.
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James Webb Space Telescope: How to Read Its Images and Spectra
Read Webb image colors, filters, scale bars and spectra, and trace an astronomical claim back to its observation.
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Pressurized experiments could help wind farms generate more power
A new way of simulating wind turbines in the field shows how tweaking turbine operation could unlock tens of thousands of dollars per turbine every year.
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Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: How to Follow and Interpret Its Results
Follow Roman mission updates, understand its surveys and planet detections, and evaluate the evidence, calibration and uncertainty behind its results.
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Robotic lab sets up and runs optics experiments on demand
The autonomous system could speed up testing of high-tech materials for applications such as solar cells, sensors, video displays, and quantum technologies.
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Wastewater Treatment: Follow the Water and the Solids
Understand municipal wastewater treatment stages, read performance figures and ask useful questions about discharge, reuse and residuals.
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MIT makes progress on campus climate goals
Innovative strategies, technologies, and collaborations are helping MIT advance solutions on campus and beyond.
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Water Pollution Pictures: Read Visual Clues and Report Concerns
Understand what water photographs can show, document an observation clearly and find the right testing or reporting channel.
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3 Questions: Putting nuclear waste into perspective
Professor Haruko Wainwright believes the risks posed by radioactive wastes cannot be properly assessed without also considering the hazards of chemical wastes.
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6-Axis Robots: Reach, Payload, Tool Orientation and Selection
Understand six-axis motion, interpret payload and precision claims, and turn an application into a robot specification.
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MIT spinout turns plastic waste into resilient building materials
Atlas Building Composites is commercializing MIT research to turn plastic waste into parts for buildings and other infrastructure.
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Carbon Capture and Storage: Evaluate the Whole Project
Evaluate carbon-capture claims across capture, transport and geological storage, distinguishing capture rate from net avoided emissions and project readiness.
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An electrochemical approach turns ammonia into pure hydrogen
An MIT team has demonstrated a more efficient way to extract pure hydrogen gas from hydrogen carrier molecules.
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AI and Scientific Discovery: How Scientists and Machines Work Together
Explore how scientists use AI to predict structures, design proteins, develop hypotheses and improve research tools, then judge the evidence behind a discovery.
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New method enables AI for safety-critical situations
The “HardFlow” algorithm could help generative AI models produce high-quality outputs that obey strict requirements when “pretty close” doesn’t cut it.
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Compressed-Air Energy Storage: Compare Designs and Performance
Compare compressed-air storage using heat management, net power, usable duration, complete energy inputs, site requirements and operating evidence.
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Study predicts large disparities in access to food, water, and energy in 2050
In some regions of the world, the poorest people may spend about 50 percent of their income on food, while the richest spend about 5 percent.
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Basic Research: How Discovery Differs from Product Development
Distinguish basic research, applied research and experimental development, then evaluate scientific progress and claims about future impact.
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Researchers tune into Arctic under-ice sounds and test through-ice communication
The work is part of a multiyear effort to develop a distributed sensor network for relaying data collected from this critical region.
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Energy Efficiency: Evaluate Upgrades and Verify Savings
Compare building efficiency proposals using a clear baseline, consistent service conditions, complete costs and a plan to verify savings.
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Researchers uncover hidden pore network within nuclear fuel
New understanding of how nuclear fuel breaks down and changes in an operating nuclear reactor could help keep some reactors running longer, will inform the next generation of nuclear reactor fuel systems.
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Mobile Data Acquisition: Plan a Reliable Science Field Study
Plan a small field investigation with sensor checks, fair comparisons, time and location records, and an editable field worksheet.
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System helps humans predict when self-driving cars will make mistakes
A new method, called CW-Net, translates the reasoning process of an autonomous vehicle’s AI system into understandable concepts that explain its behavior.
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Green Power: Compare Renewable Electricity Offers and Claims
Compare U.S. renewable-electricity offers using cost, contract terms, renewable energy certificates and evidence supporting the advertised claim.
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MIT researchers tackle the economic realities of fusion power
Their new study aims to give budding industry a framework for understanding how fusion can be profitable.
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Autonomous Navigation: How a Robot Finds and Follows a Route
Trace a mobile robot's navigation loop, diagnose common route failures, and plan a small supervised test with useful evidence.
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MIT engineers design a better controller for operating construction diggers
The new, more intuitive system could speed up the training process for excavator operators.
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Smart Electric Meters: Understand Usage and Rate Options
Use interval meter data to distinguish power from energy, check a bill and compare time-of-use rates with a worked example.
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A new way to watch heat move through electronics
MIT researchers can now precisely measure how heat moves through multilayered materials like computer chips.
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Cleanroom Robots: Specify the Process and Check the Evidence
Read a robot cleanroom qualification, define the installed cell's requirements, and prepare a supplier evidence checklist.
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Transmission Grid: Understand Power Flow, Voltage and Constraints
Understand electricity delivery, real and reactive power, and the different constraints that a transmission upgrade must address.
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Data Loggers: Plan a Measurement You Can Trust
Choose sensor range, resolution, sampling and storage intervals; handle timestamps, calibration checks, and missing data with a verified temperature example.
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How to Build a Robot: A First Wheeled-Robot Project
Build a small robot project in stages, program a short supervised drive, and test its movement and bump response.
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Wind Power: Understand Output, Siting and Project Tradeoffs
Interpret wind projects using rated capacity, annual generation, site evidence, grid connection and local operating impacts.
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E-Science: Build a Reproducible Research Workflow
Preserve research data, metadata, code, environments, and provenance. Try a verified downloadable project and distinguish reproducibility from validity.
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Laser Welding Robots: Prepare a Useful Process Trial
Evaluate joint fit-up, tooling, laser access, weld quality and complete cycle time before specifying a robotic laser-welding cell.
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How to Photograph and Measure Fossils Without Losing Context
Document fossil specimens with scale, orientation, provenance, and uncertainty; verify image measurements and recognize bias in published photographs.
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Manufacturing Robots: Plan a Useful First Automation Project
Assess task suitability, production capacity, integration costs and acceptance tests before specifying a robot cell.
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Mass Spectrometry: Read the Signal and Understand the Evidence
Understand mass-to-charge ratio, analyzer roles, resolving power, mass error and identification limits, with a checked downloadable ppm example.
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Robots Make Robots: Understanding ABB's Shanghai Factory
Follow the Shanghai robot factory from announcement to opening, and understand how assembly cells, mobile logistics, data and people work together.
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Research Design Tools: Turn a Question into a Testable Experiment
Plan controls, experimental units, randomization, replication and blocking, with a verified fictional filter experiment and downloadable research worksheets.
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X-Ray Diffraction: What a Pattern Can—and Cannot—Tell You
Read powder X-ray diffraction patterns, check Bragg-law calculations, and understand phase identification, peak widths, and quantitative limits.
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