AeroAstro had a strong showing at ASCEND 2023, the AIAA’s premier global space conference. AIAA president-elect Prof. Dan Hastings led the panel Space Workforce 2030: A Diversity Pledge to Go Boldly, Together. Alum and astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli (SB ‘05), currently aboard the International Space Station, joined remotely to participate in the session From Dreaming to Doing: Utilizing Creativity and Imagination to Accelerate our Off-World Future

Prof. Olivier de Weck was Session Chair for Space Resource Stewardship I, and offered closing remarks at the “Space Commerce and Logistics 2050” session organized by Lockheed Martin. In his talk, “Space Logistics: Enabler of the final frontier 1950-2050,” he reviewed the key concepts, history, state-of-the art and future of space logistics, with a focus on multi-commodity network flow analysis which is applicable to both terrestrial and interplanetary supply chains. He concluded with a discussion of Orbital Reef, a joint effort by Blue Origin
and MIT to develop and launch a new commercial space station starting in 2026, as well as the
recent successful MIT-led MOXIE experiment that produced 99+% pure oxygen on Mars.

The Engineering Systems Lab presented the following papers at ASCEND:
A Game Theoretic Approach to Resilient Satellite Communications System Design Subject to Adversarial Interactions
Authors: Michael Jones and Olivier de Weck
Session: SEC-01 Securing Future Space Architectures

Enhancing HabNet to Support Water Demand Estimates for Human and Scientific Exploration of Mars
Authors: Yana Charoenboonvivat, Olivier de Weck, and Sydney Do (JPL)
Session: ISRU-01 – ISRU of Water

Pale Red Dot: A Large, Robust Architecture for Human Settlements on Mars
Authors: Victoria M. O’Leary, George C. Lordos, Madelyn Hoying, Yousif AlSadah, Liliana Arias, Ignacio Arzuaga Garcia, H Azzouz, John Beilstein, Wing Lam Chan, Ezra Eyre, Dane Gleason, Meltem Ikinci, Divya Krishnan, Yuying Lin, Estelle Martin, Lanie Grace McKinney, Duncan Miller, Cormac O’Neill, Omar Orozco, Palak B. Patel, Elizabeth Romero, Francisco Sepulveda, David Villegas, Alisa Nicole Webb, Kir Latyshev, Chloe Gentgen, Alexandros C. Lordos, Olivier L De Weck, Jeffrey A. Hoffman
Session: EDUC-03 Space Design & Architectures Student Competition Winning Teams Presentations

Producing Lunar Steel and Oxygen using Molten Lunar Regolith Electrolysis
Authors: Palak B. Patel, Jose Soto, Scarlett Koller, Kir Latyshev, Lokesh Sangabattula, Zachary Adams, Kristoff Misquitta, Laman Jalil, Amber Cooper, Tom Nguyen, Jonatan Fontanez, Beverly Ma, Hyein Na, Jose Ramirez, Chiara Rissola, Inimai Subramanian, Dean Bergman, Antoine Allanore, Martin Culpepper, Olivier L De Weck1, George C. Lordos, Jeffrey A. Hoffman
Session: ISRU-02 ISRU of Regolith