NASA Taps Brown, MIT Researchers For Institute

A team of scientists from Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been selected by NASA to be part of a new research effort.

Nineteen researchers from Brown and seven from MIT will be part of the agency's new Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute.

The team will work on developing scientific goals and exploration strategies for the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and two Martian moons.

Two astronauts will help the team. They are Dave Scott, commander of Apollo 15 and a visiting professor at Brown, and Jeff Hoffman, a veteran of five space shuttle missions and a professor at MIT.

The group from Brown and MIT group is among nine selected from a pool of 32 proposals.