Universe Today Podcast

Solar energy is the ideal way to power a spacecraft. There’s no weather, there’s no pesky atmosphere, just pure photons streaming from the Sun to harvest for whatever you need. Well, as long as you’r…

In this week's questions show, I tackle questions about seeding Europa with hardy Earth life, what makes galaxies spin, what are we competing with aliens for, and why is it so hard for second stages …

The race is on to find life in other places in the Solar System, from underground reservoirs on Mars to the subsurface oceans on Europa and Enceladus.

If spacecraft, rovers or even astronauts make …

If you’ve watched this channel enough, you might have the impression that I hate Venus. It’s possible, just possible I’ve even suggested that the planet is so terrible it should be pushed into the Su…

In this week's questions show, I explain why it's probably not time to reconsider the definition of a moon, if we could make artificial gravity with a chunk of a neutron star, and why a supermassive …

Scientists have had the opportunity to examine several asteroids in the Solar System now, and what they’ve learned is how much variety is out there, depending on the mass, distance from the Sun and c…

In this week's live QA, we talked about rotating space stations, the materials that can be made in space, what telescopes and binoculars I use. And there were a lot of questions about James Webb.

04…

People always ask me how I think humanity will react if we discover life somewhere out there in the Universe, whether it’s bacteria under the surface of Mars, a biosignature of alien life in the atmo…

In this week's questions show, I explain why we'll never know which stars have no planets. How we could prevent a catastrophe to Earth, and why aliens might still be a threat to us.

Check out more o…

No guest this week, just a live QA with me and the audience about all things space and astronomy. People had questions about how planets can capture asteroids to turn them into moons, what rocket Jam…

Even as the first rockets were launched into space decades ago, aerospace knew it was a wasteful process. Rocket stages, motors, and complex equipment crashed into the ocean or burned up in the Earth…

While we’re all waiting for James Webb to launch - which it will - the Extremely Large Telescope to be constructed, and LUVOIR to get approved.

(Please get approved, please get approved.)

We’re go…

In this week's questions show, I explain why Starship probably won't contribute to human carbon emissions, if there's a galactic Prime Directive, and if SpaceX has finally perfected the single-stage …

This week I was joined by astronaut Ron Garan to talk about his new book "Floating in Darkness". Ron is an accomplished F-16 pilot, flying combat missions during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

He …

After decades of research, including multiple landers and orbiters, science can definitively say: Venus sucks. Seriously, that place is the worst, with its boiling temperature, intense pressure, sulf…

In 2017, Elon Musk laid out his grand sweeping plans for the future of SpaceX, the company that would take humanity to Mars. Over decades, tens of thousands of Starship flights would carry a million …

My guest this week was Professor Sean Carroll from Caltech. Sean's a theoretical physicist, author of many books, and podcaster. His newest book, "Something Deeply Hidden" has just been released, pre…

On Saturday, September 28th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stood in front of an audience in Boca Chica, Texas, and presented the fully assembled SpaceX Starship, 50 meters tall and made from shiny stainless s…

One of my most requested guests is Dr. Robert Zubrin, engineer and founder of the Mars Society. It was Dr. Zubrin's "Case for Mars" that helped inspire me to get into space journalism in the first pl…

In this week's questions show, I explain how scientists know that meteorites came from Mars, is it dangerous to look for alien civilizations, what citizen science projects to get involved in, and mor…