This is another weird week for space news, where it felt like human space exploration was going to steal every headline. We saw the successful return to Earth of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, the successful launch of Polaris Dawn and what appears, at the time of this recording on the morning of Sep 12, the successful space walk of non-NASA astronauts. As we look at all these headlines, it’s important to remember that today’s spending on human space flight is motivated by both a modern Lunar Space Race, and the desire of billionaires to colonize Mars. These adventures in human exploration build...
Ep. 3.03 Mars is the future, the day the Dinos Died, a Star’s Death in 3 Acts, and more
I have to admit, realizing it is somehow late August was a bit startling. I’m not entirely sure where my summer went, but I am grateful that my garden is finally producing veg, and the temps are starting to slowly trend downward. The Dog Days of summer are named for...
Ep. 3.02 NASA Budget Woes May Murder Missions
Putting this episode together has been a bit of a wild ride and we actually delayed the episode for one week because I was hoping to see some of the stories on our list to cover come to some kind of a resolution. But no… 5 extra days later, we’re still not...
Ep 3.01: Found – 1 Intermediate Mass Black Hole
Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including how Jupiter's Great Red Spot went missing, Io's Lava Lake, Titan's coastal erosion, and this week's tales from the launch pad. We also look closer at the discovery of the first...
Ep. 2.23: Planning to go back to the Moon
Let's take a quick tour of the latest news, including updates on the Hubble Space Telescopes and single gyro operations, EUCLID's image release, an amazing new image of Io by LBT, and new calculations of Pluto's oceans. We also look in detail at plans to return humans...
S2 Ep 22: Climate in Crisis (and stars in formation)
In this episode, we bring you stories on how JWST - Not LIGO and Virgo - spotted the most distant Black Hole merge to date, why the search for life on other worlds gets more challenging the more we look, and we take a deep dive into the things we’re doing that cause...
S2 Ep 21: Carrington 2024
In this episode, we’re taking a closer look at Sunspot complex 3664 and the beautiful chaos that it’s been creating. And because we’re in a planetary science kind of mood, we’re also looking at stories related to observing weather on alien worlds, the history of Mars...
S2 Ep 20: Io and Juno Begin to Part Ways
In February, on the closest approach, NASA's Juno spacecraft was within 930 miles of the closest moon Io’s surface. Since then, Juno’s orbit has been shrinking, bringing the mission closer to Jupiter and away from the circling Galilean moons. Io and Juno have parted...
S2 Ep 19: Catch the (Alien) Rainbow
As scientists discover and explore the atmospheres of more and more planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, we are learning that if you can imagine it, it probably exists. In a new paper discussing the planet WASP-76b, researchers describe what appears to be a...
S2 Ep 18: Following the Water Toward Climate Change
This week’s episode is brought to you by last week’s terrible weather. While experiencing hail and thunder IRL, we also saw press release after press release and article after article discussing climate change. This one-two punch of new science and the need for a new...
S2 Ep 17: Planet Formation is (Still) Not Well Understood
One of our recurring topics is “Planet formation is not well understood,” and a trio of new papers is making it clear why planet formation continues to... not be well understood. Put simply: the universe likes to create more diverse solar systems than an entire...