Spacepod

Dr Spencer Backus talks about his work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He explains the complexities of trying to design hands for robots. An example of a robot hand is the undersea gripper he wo…

Dr. Jacob Izraelevitz describes how engineers might design a balloon to explore Venus. This work is in the early stages, what NASA refers to as a "Mission Concept." He also explains the challenges of…

When taking a sample of the Moon's surface, the Apollo astronauts discovered a sharp transition from powdery soil to harder rock. This transition was entirely unexpected, and remained unexplained for…

Dr. Seager explains how she and other astronomers are looking for extraterrestrial life. We discuss the Drake and Seager equations. We also talk about how astronomers might be able to detect life by …

Professor Katelyn Allers talks about how you can discover small cold stars! She is a member of the Backyard Worlds project, which is a collaboration between astronomers and citizen scientists. This p…

Brent Barbee returns to the show to talk about deflecting asteroids. He explains how an asteroid might react to an impact, and also talks about the proposed DART mission, which would change the orbit…

Dr. Solange Ramirez returns to the show to talk about her new position as Project Manager of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V. Amount other things, the project will study over six million stars and how…

Rob Seaman of the Catalina Sky Survey talks about time, and why you need to know the time to discover asteroids and comets. He explains how he installed a highly accurate clock, and makes the case th…

Dr. Dave Tholen talks about near-Earth asteroids. He explains why they can be difficult to observe, and how he manages to spot them anyway. He also tells the story of a particularly famous asteroid t…

The James Webb Space Telescope hasn't launched yet, but scientists already have plans to use it. Dr. Kartaltepe talks about how she'll use it to study galaxies. She's interested in the first galaxies…

Urey Prize winner Dr. Francesca DeMeo stops by the show to talk about her asteroid research. She explains what a differentiated asteroid is, and tells us about her asteroid classification system. She…

Dr. Matthew Payne talks about his exoplanet research, which involves looking for periodic dimming in stars. We discuss the Kepler and TESS space telescopes, and he explains why he's so interested in …

Dr. Joanna Carey talks about her research on our home planet, Earth. She explains how the climate change we're experiencing is ten times faster than any in geologic history. We also discuss why small…

Dr. Alejandro Soto returns to the show to talk about how lakes on Titan and on Earth influence the nearby atmosphere. He talks about how lakes create breezes that allow for sailing on Earth, and how …

Dr. Matt Holman, head of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, stops by to talk asteroids. The Minor Planet Center handles about a hundred thousand asteroid observations a night, from …

Dr. Sebastiano Padovan talks about the planet closest to the sun, Mercury. He compares the evolution of planets to movies, and says that understanding a planet's history from its current state is lik…

Tim Thompson, former JPL scientist and member of the Mt. Wilson Institute Board of Trustees, talks about the Mt. Wilson Observatory. He explains why he doesn't operate the Mt. Wilson telescopes himse…

Dr. Ingrid Daubar returns to the show to tell us about the InSight mission to Mars. InSight carries a seismometer and a self-hammering heat probe, and will explore the interior of the planet. She tel…