Our mission is to democratize access to space exploration and prototype our sci-fi space futures.
The MIT Space Exploration Initiative is creating and deploying space technologies that envision a bold and culturally rich “new space age.” The philosophy of “democratizing access to space exploration”—bringing moonshots and starshots into the purview of hackers and makers—courses through our work, and guides both our research platform and our extensive STEAM outreach efforts.
Our efforts to prototype science fiction-inspired futures occur across many disciplines at multiple scales —
Biome
On Earth, biomes serve to organize or classify communities of plants and animals that share key characteristics of their environment. The biome framing calls attention to those aspects of our portfolio that deal directly with the human body and the communities of microbes that will accompany us on our early space voyages.
Envirome
Our Envirome research integrates creative interior design, industrial design of day-to-day artifacts, health and wellbeing diagnostics, and environmental stimuli to support inhabitant flourishing.This research platform builds towards a near-future where space-faring humans can both survive and thrive wherever the future takes us.
Exobiome
Outside the meticulously crafted shells that will ferry our fragile human biology through the extreme environment of space, we find an expansive domain to explore. SEI has just scratched the surface of the exobiome — that which lies just outside or beyond our vision for life in space.
Portfolio
We are designing the artifacts of our sci-fi space future to delight and empower humanity for everyday life in space. This work constitutes the bulk of our research portfolio and the 40-plus projects underway across MIT. We build, test, and deploy these artifacts ourselves on our parabolic flights, for our suborbital launches, remotely inside International Space Station missions, and soon, on the surface of the moon.
Flight Missions
The Space Exploration Initiative takes an iterative approach to prototyping — from parabolic flights, to suborbital launches, to the International Space Station and the surface of the moon.
Community Outreach
The Initiative builds communities that foster open access projects, like an interplanetary cookbook soliciting submissions from across the globe and STEAM outreach programs with DIY hacker/maker guidelines for climate-sensing cubesats. The near future of near space will touch the lives of countless Earth citizens, and we want these citizens to play a part in creating and shaping space technologies, whether or not they travel there themselves.
Events
The Space Exploration Initiative has curated a series of events, special talks and workshops on and off MIT campus, including Beyond the Cradle, our annual flagship event. In addition, the SEI hosts notable guests for a public lecture series with our broader community, including leading space industry executives, scientists, lawyers, and philosophers.
Into the Anthropocosmos
Learn more about how SEI’s mission and methods have shaped the past five years of participatory space exploration at the Initiative in Into the Anthropocosmos, a lavishly illustrated catalog released in honor of SEI’s 5th anniversary.
Cover art by Josh Simpson & Sands Fish