Fraser Cain

In this week's questions show, I explain why NASA decided to build James Webb and not more Hubble Space Telescopes, what would happen if you opened up a jar in space, and do we know of any stars without planets?

Explorers have always brought stowaways with them on board. Thanks to our travels around the world, hardy creatures like rats, goats, pigs and starlings and more have found their way to every corner of the globe. Not to mention our plants, microbes and viruses.

Wherever we go, life goes with us, whether we want it to or not. And when we travel to other worlds, it looks like the most extreme life Earth has ever cooked up is ready and willing to make the journey with us.

Now that the big flybys are over, it’s time to dig into the regolith, search for life in underground lakes and oceans, return samples back to Earth. We’re going to give life every opportunity to contaminate other worlds.

What can we do to prevent it?

In this week's penultimate episode of Open Space before our summer hiatus, I give tips and tricks on seeing Jupiter, what's a good starting telescope, updates on LIGO, why rockets launch straight up, and more...

In this week's live QA episode, I tackled questions about the reality of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, the loss of dark skies, will we ever be able to shop for our own personal spacecraft, and more.

In this QA, I explain why only gas giants have rings, if it would be possible to cool down Venus, what would it take to build a generational ships and more...

Every time we send a spacecraft to another world, our Earth-based lifeforms are going with us. No matter how well we try to keep them clean, a few stowaways will always come along for the ride.

You’d think that years in the cold hard vacuum of space, suffering extreme temperature changes, and receiving brutal doses of radiation would be all it takes to sterilize any life caught on the outside of a lander or rover headed to Mars or Europa.

Well, think again. Life just demonstrated that it’s surprisingly ready to make the journey, and happy to get back to work the moment conditions improve.

In this week's questions show, I give my personal experience of how bright the Starlinks are, and I wonder if companies like SpaceX have the right to provide internet to the planet. Who asked them? Why do people think black holes are so cool? They're scary!

On Thursday, May 23rd, 2019, SpaceX launched one of its most important payloads in the history of the company - 60 satellites that will begin the constellation of their Starlink internet satellite system.

Tony and Dustin brought me back for round two on the Space Junk Podcast. This time to talk about my favorite topic: The Fermi Paradox. Was I able to convince Dustin that we're probably the only intelligent life in the observable Universe? Subscribe to their podcast at: https://anchor.fm/spacejunk

This isn't an interview by me, it's an interview - of me - on the Science News and Questions (SNaQ) podcast from the Carnegie Science Center. Our conversation starts at the 15 minute mark. And if you like the podcast, subscribe at snaq.podbeam.com

This week I was joined by one of my favorite authors, Dennis E. Taylor, the creator of the Bobiverse Trilogy. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you read this series. He was here to talk about what went into the books and his newest book, Outland.

On Monday, May 13, 2019, NASA declared: “We are going to the Moon to stay” by 2024.

It’s an exciting announcement; the return to a place humans haven’t set foot on in more than 45 years. A serious goal that will test the ability of technology and engineering, as well as the bravery of the men and women who will carry out this task.

But we’ve also heard announcements like this before, many times. How will the mission come together? What are the risks? What’s new this time?

In this week's questions show, I wonder why there isn't a standard platform for space exploration, if we could move the atmosphere from Venus to Mars, are there L6 and L7 Lagrange Points and more. Featuring guest answerer Dylan O'Donnell.

Again no guest this week. Just you and me. Talking about space. In this week's live QA, people waned to know more information about space construction (09:04), if we could catch a future Oumuamua (11:04) and my thoughts on Blue Origin's Blue Moon strategy (18:07).

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope launched on April 24, 1990, and it’s been hard at work ever since, studying the cosmos like no other observatory in human history.

Several times in its journey, astronomers have called upon Hubble to study a single spot in the sky for weeks at a time, staring as far as it can, almost to the edge of the observable Universe.

These are the deep fields, including the most recent Hubble eXtreme Deep Field.

Now all of these data have been mashed together into a single image, spanning more than 250 days of observations.

It’s called the Hubble Legacy Field.

In this week's questions show, I think about the future of humanity, wonder what would happen if Olympus Mons erupted and how big observatories clean the dust off their telescopes.