High in the Arctic, a team of space engineers, a geologist, an architect, and a designer journeyed to Svalbard for an expedition with the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative. Their motivation was to test technology to support access to remote regions from the far corners of planet Earth, to the moon, and Mars.
Looking out of the airplane window from above was sea and ice. The last sight of treetops were left behind in mainland Norway.
On October 3, 2022, a team and their robots arrived in Svalbard for an Arctic expedition with MIT Space Exploration Initiative (SEI). For the next 10 days, seven researchers and logistics support from departments across MIT tested technology for space, with applications for remote regions on Earth. This was SEI's first Arctic expedition and space analog.