“My vision is to create a comfortable egg, friendly, where walls are so soft and in harmony with the movements of the human body in zero gravity,” enterprising designer Philippe Starck says of his latest commission: private accommodation on the International Space Station (ISS) for commercial tourists. NASA partnered with Axiom Space on the project, who then tapped Starck. The project should be complete by 2024—and …
From her time as a childhood math prodigy in West Virginia to her crucial role as a “computer” at NASA, where her calculations helped lead astronauts into orbit and then the moon, black mathematician Katherine Johnson was a pioneering figure in spaceflight. Johnson’s work was critical to NASA’s earlier successes—especially during the space race—but they wouldn’t get mainstream recognition until President Barack Obama awarded her …
MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative focuses on all kinds of research and preparation for “the day when humanity becomes a space-native civilization, as comfortable in the cosmos as we have been on Earth.” The team (made up of 50+ graduate students, staff, scientists, designers, and engineers) works on countless aspects of space travel, but hones in on two central topics: boredom and food. These …
