MIT spinout Boston Metal completed its first run of an industrial reactor that uses electricity to make steel, producing over a ton of metal. While there are still a lot of hurdles left, the latest run shows that the company can scale up its process.

Charge Robotics has created a portable system that automatically assembles and installs completed sections of large solar farms. “We think of this as the Henry Ford moment for solar,” says Banks Hunter ’15.

Climate change is reducing the atmosphere’s ability to burn up old space junk, decreasing the number of satellites that can safely orbit in space, engineers report. “If the atmosphere is changing, then the debris environment will change too,” William Parker says.

Via @lincoln_laboratory on Instagram: “Staffed by an award-winning team of engineers, mechanics, and pilots, MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Flight Test Facility operates several aircrafts that research teams can employ to test their prototype airborne systems.”

If your arm doesn’t hurt after pounding nails, thank Kurt Schroder ’90, whose design improved the majority of hammers sold in the U.S. This is just one of his many groundbreaking inventions. “An inventor always sees a future in which everything is better,” he says.

New research could enable users to correct a robot’s behavior with simple interactions, like pointing to an item or nudging the robot’s arm. This intuitive approach would allow a layperson to guide a robot right out of the box, with no machine-learning expertise required.