Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage
It's cosmology in a cup! - Cosmic Coffee Time is bite sized podcasts making sense of space, astronomy, life, and the universe, best enjoyed with a coffee. A down to earth look at what's up there, and it's just for you spacefans. Grab a coffee and see where in the universe we go this time. Follow on Twitter @CosmicCoffTime
- Update frequency
- every 27 days
- Average duration
- 8 minutes
- Episodes
- 82
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
#82 Apollo-Soyuz at 50! It’s been a half century since this incredible project. The first international space mission.
In 1975, an incredible and unlikely partnership resulted in the docking of a NASA Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit. The cold war opponents worked together to …
#81 After centuries of Earth’s rotation slowing down, it’s now speeding up and making the days shorter. But you’d never notice.
Earth’s days had been getting longer since observations began. Every century, the length of the day would increase by about two milliseconds. Like… clockwork. In recent years, something…
#80 Plants on the Moon. An Australian team of biologists and engineers are really sending a mini greenhouse to the Moon.
An Australian team of botanists and engineers are working on a project that might make or break the future of long term, long distance space occupation. They're growing plants. Not that…
#79 Launched in 1972 for Venus, Kosmos 482 failed to escape Earth orbit — and finally returned in May 2025, after 53 years in space
Kosmos 482, was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1972 on a mission to Venus, but a technical glitch meant it never made it past Earth orbit. Designed to withstand the hellish surface of …
#78 The Andromeda Galaxy is a cosmic neighbour that’s going to collide with our Milky Way Galaxy. Should we panic?
No need to panic. Yet! We’ll be fine for the next 4 or 5 billion years, but Andromeda is heading our way. The Andromeda Galaxy was the first object to be identified as being outside our…
#77 The stranded astronauts are finally home after 9 months in space. Let’s see how Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore got home
Their planned 8 day visit to the International Space Station was turned on its head when NASA announced their Boeing Starliner capsule was unsafe to use. What did Suni Williams and Butc…
#76 The Apollo program was the high point of the space age. From test flights, to lunar landings and the moon buggies
After everything learned through Mercury and Gemini culminated in the seventeen Apollo missions. The first ten were all testing and rehearsals, but the whole program, and a whole era wa…
#75 NASA's Project Gemini was a spectacular program that bridged the gap from Project Mercury to Apollo. Gemini developed the incredible technology and techniques needed for the lunar program
Nasa had accomplished spaceflight with Project Mercury but the gap to Apollo was still huge. How do you dock two spacecraft in flight and how do crews live in a tiny spacecraft for luna…
#74 At the beginning of the space race, Project Mercury was NASA’s first human crewed spaceflight program, and it was a significant step on the road to the moon. Let’s dive into the vault and check it out.
Back in the late 1950s, NASA was formed. Its first job was to put together a human crewed spaceflight program and put an astronaut into orbit - safely. This was Project Mercury. There w…
#73 NASA’s Project Mercury Monument has turned 60! It’s a tribute to America's first attempt at human space flight. The monument has a time capsule that is scheduled to stay sealed for 500 years! Let’s check out what's inside.
Project Mercury was NASA’s first attempt at human crewed space flight. It sent Alan Shepard into space, and John Glenn into orbit, among four other landmark flights over 5 years. By 196…
#72 The space pioneers from Earth weren’t humans, what? That’s right, long before humans launched into space, there were a whole team of dogs, monkeys, chimps, insects and more, who rode rockets to space. All in the name of research.
When Yuri Gagarin blasted into orbit in 1961 to become the first human in space, he was already 14 years behind the first animals from Earth. The fruit flies that were flew to space in …
#71 Earth has a new moon! For about the next 8 weeks... Asteroid 2024 PT5 will be captured by Earth's gravity before returning to its normal solar orbit.
Earth has a new moon! well, for about 8 weeks anyway. Asteroid 2024 PT5 has been captured by Earth’s gravity and will be in orbit until late November 2024. This is really unusual and th…
#70 The Boeing Starliner capsule's first crewed test flight has left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. What went wrong, and how are they going to get home?
Boeing’s Starliner space capsule blasted off for its first crewed test flight in early June. Great news right? Turns out, no. After arriving at the International Space Station, some tec…
#69 NASA's Curiosity rover has just made the most incredible discovery of its 12 years on Mars. By running over a rock!
NASA's Curiosity rover touched down on Mars in August 2012, and it's been exploring the Red Planet all that time. There have been some amazing discoveries and it's travelled over 30km b…
#68 A piece of space history was written this month, a sample from the far side of the moon! Let's check out the Chang'e 6 lunar lander and it's history-making mission.
As I write this, just a couple of days have passed since the Chang'e 6 sample return capsule touched down with its historic payload. The first sample of rock and soil from the far side …
#67 OSIRIS-REx NASA mission scientist Greg Brennecka brings us up to date on the incredible early findings from the Bennu asteroid sample.
In September 2023, Greg Brennecka stopped by to preview the return to Earth of the OSIRI-REx asteroid Bennu sample return capsule. The sample landed safely and the mission scientists li…
#66 Saturn’s largest moon Titan is an incredible place, but could anything live there? Canadian Astrobiologist Dr Catherine Neish led a study on Titan’s habitability. She joins us for a fascinating chat about what she found.
Titan. The largest moon in the Saturnian system has been a candidate as a habitable world ever since NASA’s Cassini mission sent back the first radar images of its surface in 2004. Astr…
#65 Spaghettification? This really is a thing. It happens if you get too close to a black hole, but what is it? And how did it get that name?
Space and cosmology throws up some strange effects sometimes, none stranger than spaghettification. Stephen Hawking coined the term for the stretching out that happens when you get clos…
#64 The Odysseus Moon Lander. The first private moon lander has touched down, but is it still ok?
Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines produced the first private mission to land on the moon. The Odysseus lander is just 300 km from the lunar south pole, investigating wa…
#63 Space Ethics. How do we navigate the ethical challenges of our journey beyond Earth?
So we pollute the upper atmosphere with rocket exhaust, is it worth the benefits of communications satellites and GPS? What about space junk? the garbage of earth orbit. Or mining aster…