Universe Today Podcast

No guest this week, just a live QA with me. We talked about what China is up to on the Moon and what comes next. How well have we mapped the surface of the Moon. Why has NASA chosen to build the Artemis mission differently from the Apollo missions, and more...

After almost 50 years since the Apollo Moon landing missions ended, NASA announced that they’re going to return to the surface of the Moon with their Artemis mission, ideally taking the first lunar footsteps in 2024.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine asked for additional funding to achieve this goal, and the other branches of government haven’t been as enthusiastic about this plan. So don’t be surprised if the landing date slips to 2028 or even farther.

But NASA is moving forward on its architecture to return humans to the Moon, from its launch rocket to the entire method of getting astronauts down to the surface.

Exactly which rockets, modules and landing systems that will be used are still getting worked out, with different options still getting considered.

Near the end of 2019, astronomers watching the red giant Betelgeuse noted how much the star had dimmed, continuing to steadily fade for months.

It’s a variable star, and it’s known to get dimmer and brighter, but the big surprise is that it’s still continuing to dim, recently passing magnitude 1.56 and still getting dimmer. This is unprecedented in the decades that astronomers have been watching the star.

The world’s biggest telescopes are on the case, and the European Southern Observatory released dramatic new images of Betelguese, resolving features on the star’s surface and surrounding area showing how it’s dramatically changed over the course of 2019.

In this week's live Q&A, and talk about whether or now we're going to need a Prime Directive in the future like Star Trek, and why aliens might have one already, could life exist on a red dwarf, and if balloons could be used to launch rockets.

In this week's questions show, I talk about how we're in a new space race, and what this means for returning to the Moon. Of course, lots of follow up answers about the Fermi Paradox. Could Betelgeuse release gravitational waves if it explodes? And what is our responsibility if we are truly alone in the Universe?

It’s hard to really wrap your mind around the vast distances between stars. The fastest spacecraft ever launched into an interstellar trajectory right now is Voyager 1. If it was directed at the nearest star, it would take tens of thousands of years to make the journey across the interstellar gulf.

Even so, groups like Breakthrough Starshot and Icarus Interstellar are working on plans right now to try and send spacecraft to other stars, ideally within our lifetimes.

But we can see how quickly technology is advancing all around us, from materials science to high energy physics, not to mention reusable rockets.

It seems reasonable to ask, should we invest in an interstellar mission now, or wait a few decades or even centuries for better technology to come along which could make the trip much shorter?

In this week's questions show, I explain why I've got such a skeptical view about the search for aliens if there might be multiple great filters, and why NASA doesn't just go back and use Apollo hardware to return to the Moon?

On February 9, 2020, the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Florida on top of an Atlas V 411 spacecraft. The spacecraft’s mission is to fly inside the orbit of Mercury, on a tilted orbit that takes it above and below the Sun, capturing images of the Sun’s poles for the first time.

This is just a year and a half after the launch of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which will fly even closer. Together, the two spacecraft will measure the Sun from every angle up close, providing detailed images and insights of our closest star, to help understand how it creates and controls the giant bubble of plasma that surrounds the entire Solar System.

In this week's questions show, I answer when the cosmic microwave background will shift into radio waves, what the Sun would sound like if space was filled with air, and limits of our knowledge about planets through simulations.

You’re looking at the highest resolution image that has ever been taken of our Sun, using the brand new Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui.

These lighter regions are convection cells, blobs of hot gas the size of Texas which have carried heat from deep below the surface of the Sun, releasing it into space. The darker lines are cooler regions, where the material is sinking back down into Sun.

This image is just a demonstration of the incredible power of this 4-meter observatory, which will join NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter in ushering in the golden age of solar astronomy.