Spacepod

Dr. Fengchuan Liu talks to us about an international project, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). He describes the telescope, it's many mirrors, and how he helps manage such a complex project.

Dr. Cindy Hunt returns to the show to talk about the upcoming 100th anniversary of the 100 inch Hooker Telescope on Mount Wilson. She explains why this telescope looks like a battleship and tells us …

Dr. Lisa Storrie-Lombardi returns to the show to discuss NuSTAR, Spitzer, and what it feels like to end a mission you’ve been working on for decades. Cassini’s Grand Finale has us reflecting on the u…

Professor Jay McMahon stops by the show to explain the YORP effect and how it changes asteroid spins and shapes. He also describes his NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project that is inve…

Dr. Mary Peterson tells us about basaltic glasses from the Galápagos Islands, and why they might have originated deep within the Earth’s mantle. She also describes her lab work, which involves cool l…

Dr. Andrea Donnellan stops by the show to talk about GeoGateway, a website that combines different datasets to help geologists. She explains how rocks move like silly putty, and recounts the time a l…

Dr. Emily Kramer stops by the show to try some tea and talk about her trip to South Africa to observe the next New Horizons target, 2014 MU69. She was one of several astronomers and planetary scienti…

Dr. Quan-Zhi Ye tries an unusual frappuccino and explains how meteor showers are related to comets. He tells the story of how he became interested in comets and asteroids, and fills us in on some of …

Dr. Jessie Christiansen returns to the show to talk about newly discovered exoplanets! She explains why this planetary system was devilishly difficult to observe with ground-based telescopes, and how…

Dr. Raymond Francis talks about a rock-vaporizing laser and the software that controls it. He describes how he and colleagues programmed a computer to make choices like a geologist would, allowing th…

Dr. Bethany Ehlmann returns to talk about Ceres. She tells us what certain types of silicates have in common with phyllo dough, and explains how traces of ammonia on Ceres hint at unusual history for…

Dr. Tiffany Meshkat describes direct imaging of exoplanets, which astronomers have used to discover enormous, young planets. She also talks about WFIRST, a mission under development that would be abl…

Dr. Armando Azua-Bustos talks about how he discovered the driest place on Earth— a region in the Atacama Desert not far from where he grew up. He explains how he collects and studies microbial life t…

Dr. Michele Koppes stops by to talk about her glacier research on planet Earth. She describes how a melting glacier triggered a staggeringly large landslide in 2015, and how glaciers can match even h…

Dr. David Ciardi talks about Vega, a bright star that’s “been a part of human lore forever.” Dr. Ciardi and his colleagues discovered that Vega has a nearby ring of dust, implying the presence of pla…

John Dailey explains how he uses his software engineering skills to discover asteroids at IPAC/Caltech. He helps solve problems inherent to working with astronomical data, such as the challenge of re…

Dr. Ingrid Daubar stops by to talk about HiRISE, a camera on a Mars-orbiting spacecraft that takes amazing images of the Martian surface. She explains how she uses these images to search for fresh cr…

Marta Bryan shares her new results on exoplanets! She explains how she tested a theory of hot jupiter formation, and how she figured out that planet rotation rates are likely set early on in the plan…

Dr. Rahul Patel describes his search for undiscovered disks of dust around other stars. He explains how looking for fainter and fainter debris disks may bring us closer to discovering a planetary sys…

Dr. Ivy Curren talks about Mars’ moon Phobos, and how grooves on its surface indicate that the interior may be fractured. This small, mysterious moon is covered in faults, making it a dicey place for…