10 Years of MIT's New Space Age Conferences

This past Friday the MIT Space Industry Club achieved a major milestone, putting on the 10th MIT's New Space Age Conference, and succeeded in enhancing the experience for the attendees, speakers and sponsors!

The level of engagement by the attendees with the exhibitors and speakers was outstanding. To see the passion, excitement and relationship building that will last for years was exactly why this conference was created 10 years ago.

To create long lasting relationships in an industry that has continued to grow rapidly was, and still is, the goal of the New Space Age Conference. 

Thank You to Jacob Gerbino, Steven Maa, Lanie McKinney, and all of the club members!!

I still remember so clearly in the fall of 2015 when we, the Astropreneurship and Space Industry Club (ASIC) at MIT, talked about the absence of any space conference in the Boston area and how bizarre it was given Boston's long standing contributions to the space industry. So how was it that there was no annual conference for the business of space here? 

As members of the Astropreneur Space Industry Club we decided to organize a new conference and we called it the New Space Age Conference.

Right from the git-go we had concerns about the level of participation locally, regionally, nationally and globally! 

Our concerns were quickly removed as we began to socialize this new event within the community.

At that time we had a small team of club members (including: Paul Van Cleef, Aleksandr Rakitin, Ulisses Meneses Ortiz, Nikhil Sachdeva, myself, and few others) and we designed a conference with 6 speaker slots and 2 commercial sponsor slots. We pitched the conference to MIT and got great support from the institute. 

Ended up - we had a keynote, 5 panels, 4 TED Talks and a fireside chat that day. There were 18 speakers (Lisa Porter, Jeff Hoffman, Emily Calandrelli, Richard Godwin, to name a few), 3 sponsors and 17 volunteers (including Ariel Ekblaw) helping us that day. Amazingly we had 150 attendees from industry and academic communities (from CA, PA, NY, VT, IL, and 5 other states).

We couldn't believe how many people came to the event and how great it was to see the space community supporting the conference. 

It was very humbling for all of us, and thank you to everyone who was there in the beginning!! Relationships created that day in 2016 persist today!

The picture below is a great way to see how the club and conference have evolved by the logo maturity over the years.

Now that the New Space Age Conference 2025 is over, the reins are getting handed over to the new student leadership of the Space Industry Club and they will begin to plan the New Space Age Conference 2026. I can't wait to see their event next year!