Universe Today Podcast

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.

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.

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).

When we send anything to space, we have to pay an enormous amount of money. That’s because you need to push satellites, water, astronauts up and out of the Earth’s gravity well. Whether you’re just going to orbit, or heading to the Moon, or out into deep space, it makes the most sense to build your structures in space, out of material that you got from space.

In this week's questions show, I wonder if it's cheaper to build things in space, if the Universe is expanding because it's rolling downhill, and do astronauts fart in space?