365 Days of Astronomy - Weekly Edition

If you want to get around in the Solar System, you'll want to take advantage of natural gravitational speed boosts and transfer orbits. Whether you're heading to the outer Solar System or you want t…

It's one thing to get from Earth to space, but sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to get into orbit or touch down gently on the surface of a planet and explore it. How do spacecraft stop…

Getting to space is all about rockets, but people are trying to figure out other methods that could carry payloads to orbit and beyond. Railguns, airplanes, tethers and more. Today we’ll talk about a…

We've seen rockets blast off from here on Earth. But that's only half the story. Rockets have additional stages to push them into trajectories, like transfer orbits and various orbital maneuvers. Let…

Pamela will be on to answer your space and astronomy questions live, as Fraser enjoys auroras in Iceland this week!

The vast majority of rockets are multi-staged affairs. Why is this? What makes this kind of rocket so successful? Today we look at the ins and outs of multi-stage rockets.

To celebrate the launch of the Falcon Heavy, we figured it was time for an all new series, this time on the rockets that carry us to space. Today we're going to talk about why single stage to orbit r…

On Christmas Day, 1968 Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders became the first human being to see the far side of the Moon. Their mission, of course, was Apollo 8, the first time human beings …

After they’ve been to space, many astronauts report that seeing the world from above has given them a totally new perspective on humanity and the state of our planet. It’s called the Overview Effect.…

You know what’s fun? Mysteries. Here’s one: fast radio bursts. Astronomers have been detecting mysterious one-time signals from across the sky. What’s causing them? Nobody knows for sure, but the sea…

Phew, 2018, time to press the reset button and enjoy a whole new year of space exploration and space science. What’s coming up this year? What should we expect to launch, and what will we see in the …

2017 was a crazy year for, well, you know. But, it was a great year for space science, a kilonova, extrasolar planets, reusable rockets and more. Let's look back at the year that was and remember our…

What happens when the future meets biology? Bioscience science fiction, of course. And that's our focus today as we continue our journey though science-based science fiction.

It's time to talk computers, and how we're going to be dealing with them in the future. In our next segment on modern sci-fi, we talk about the future of the human-computer interface.

Our journey through interesting science fiction, this time we talk about speculative fiction dealing with materials science, nanotechnology and 3D printing. It’s a staple in Star Trek, but what other…

We've always been fans of science fiction, but we really like our science. Today we'll talk about some books we've been reading recently that do a good job of dealing with the science in science fict…

Astronomers depend on simulations to study the Universe. From relatively straightforward orbital simulations to vast simulations that try to recreate the large scale structure of the Universe from th…

Many of the moons and planets across the Universe are in resonance with each other and their star. What causes this resonance, and how can it help us understand the history of planetary formation and…

We depend on zero for our math to work right, but this number was actually invented in fairly recent times. Why do we need zero? Was it inevitable?