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...
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...
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...
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...
Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including Mars Perseverance Rover fords an ancient river, black holes sometimes form like baby stars, and this week's tales from the launch pad. We also look in detail at how JWST images...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Earlier in March, Congress voted into place the FY2024 budgets for multiple agencies, including NASA. The agency is being asked for an overall 2% cut. Combined with inflation rates over 3%, we are looking at a fairly significant cut to the U.S. budget for space...
As you know, our team loves volcanoes, and since we’ve been focused on Iceland for months, we brought in Dr. Melissa Scruggs (aka VolcanoDoc on Twitch) for a chat about Grindavik and all things volcanic in Iceland.
It is possible to buy stickers, sweatshirts, mugs, and other stuff and things emblazoned with the simple phrase, “We are star stuff”. This phrase was popularized by Carl Sagan, and it serves as a gentle reminder that all the complex atoms - by which I mean most...
One of the unexpected realities of JWST is the discovery that we have really been asking the wrong questions in many astronomy areas. For instance: we generally asked how supermassive black holes and galaxies formed, with a basic assumption that these things happened...
Every time I get the digital “why can’t you scientists just look at the data” lecture, I wonder what people think scientists do. All we do is look at data, and when that data tells us our understanding of the universe is wrong, we’re pretty good at accepting the data...
Robots on Mars have a long history of exceeding all possible expectations. From Spirit and Opportunity lasting far beyond their planned 90-day missions to Ingenuity lasting 72 flights out of a planned five, these craft have become so beloved that we mourn their...
If you take a compass and follow its pointy little needle, you will end up in Northern Canada but not at the North Pole. If you have a boat, you'll end up on Ellesmere Island wondering where Santa is hiding. The fact that the rotational north pole of the Earth and the...
As the Thanksgiving leftovers reach the stage of possibly gaining intelligence in the back of our refrigerators, we’re going to take a look at the origins of life, how we might find simple life on icy moons, and even how we can practice learning to communicate with...
Researchers currently think solar maximum - when the Sun is most active - will occur sometime in late 2024 to early 2025. With this cycle, we will experience just what a good blast of solar radiation can do to the small sats, CanSats, and other satellites in low-earth...
We keep tweaking our format a little bit every episode, trying to find the right mix for YouTube, podcasts, and now, short-form video. We think we the setup is on the mark now and thank you for your patience as we made adjustments. Soon, we will have content to share...
Dr. Pamela is big on volcanoes, and she hoped we’d have an awesome new eruption to report, but we don't. There is, however, still a lot of news this week that doesn’t include an Iceland eruption. Instead, the news includes the first images from a new spacecraft,...
