Dava Newman: Space Exploration, Space Suits, and Life on Mars

Dava Newman is the Apollo Program professor of AeroAstro at MIT
and the former Deputy Administrator of NASA and has been a
principal investigator on four spaceflight missions. Her research
interests are in aerospace biomedical engineering, investigating
human performance in varying gravity environments. She has
developed a space activity suit, namely the BioSuit, which would
provide pressure through compression directly on the skin via the
suit’s textile weave, patterning, and materials rather than with
pressurized gas.


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through robotics and STEM education.


Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you
should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.


00:00 – Introduction
03:11 – Circumnavigating the globe by boat
05:11 – Exploration
07:17 – Life on Mars
11:07 – Intelligent life in the universe
12:25 – Advanced propulsion technology
13:32 – The Moon and NASA’s Artemis program
19:17 – SpaceX
21:45 – Science on a CubeSat
23:45 – Reusable rockets
25:23 – Spacesuit of the future
32:01 – AI in Space
35:31 – Interplanetary species
36:57 – Future of space exploration