EVSN: Escape Velocity Space News

Once again, we're going to attempt to get you up to date with what is going down at NASA. In addition to NASA updates, we have stories of science that comes in twos. From 2 planets forming in a disk to 2 stars coming together to shine brightly, to two asteroids that together orbit the Sun a bit faster, to two planets that collided, … it is a week for pairs.

In this special episode, funded by the National Science Foundation, we're taking a break from the headlines to share the background story of comets. Today, we'll focus on the origin of comets and their basic anatomy, and in future episodes, we'll dive deep into how comets are discovered, what we can learn from them, and how they can literally and figuratively impact our world.

This episode went through a lot of rewrites as breaking news kept breaking our hearts. Artemis is still on, but there are delays and cancellations. Before we face that, let's look at some pretty pictures and remember the universe is pretty even when our Earthly-timeline is not.

The glaciers are melting, the volcanoes are erupting, and earthquakes are shaking things up. Let's discuss.

In this episode, we take a closer look at how the increasing number of rockets and satellites going up mean there is also an unfortunate increase in the space junk coming down. We also cover dramatic weather, stars dying and disappearing, and update you on Maven and Paranal Observatory.

In this episode we look at highlights from the latest American Astronomical Society Meeting. An accidental theme came out: with each new telescope and each improved instrument we can look more closely at our universe - we can and do learn more and understand more even about the things we thought we knew best. In this episode, Rubin Observatory brings rapidly rotating asteroids, and JWST peers at objects thriving in the first 2 billion years of our universe. Observatory after observatory brings us new science.

In this episode, we're pleased to say we get to focus on science, as we bring you hot Jupiters, a tear-drop shaped Jupiter massed… something…? - and news of objects getting torn apart and other objects getting merged together as our universe lights up our night.

In this week's episode, we look at planets younger than fossils, celebrate relativity repeatedly working as expected, and peer at previously only theorized 1st generation stars using JWST. We celebrate the completion of the construction of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and look in on all the recent launches. All this and more is coming to you right here, and right now.

The world we live on today has undergone dramatic change since it first formed, and time hasn't necessarily been kind. Earth has gained some weight (and a Moon) after a chance collision. A leaky gut led to some confusing internal structures. Here on the surface, mountains keep finding new ways to pop off and destroy surroundings. But scientists are helping us understand all these factors. Learn how in this episode of EVSN, and also hear about our latest tales from the launch pad.

We live on an ever-changing world, and by studying the past, we can better understand our potential futures. In this episode, we follow the water and look at how past periods of glacial melt changed water levels, look into the water and see how pond and sea life add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and reflect on a glacier that shrank by 24 km in just 2 years. Oh, and there are also tales from the launch pad!

In this episode, we look at some of our latest discoveries about the formation of star systems, including planets and moons, and the growth of black holes. We also take a closer look at our brightening skies, and the missions set to make things worse. We also cover the latest tales from the launch pad.

The universe is hard enough to figure out without one kind of object dressing up as another, but - just in time for Halloween - researchers have figured out that the Little Red Dot in the early universe just might be massive black holes surrounded in a costume of glowing red gas. Also in this episode, Hyabusa2's amusingly tiny destination, a white dwarf star eating what may be an icy dwarf planet, and tales from the launch pad.

In this week's episode, we tell the story of a Giant Blue Star that made the terrible, terrible mistake of trying to nibble on its more evolved sibling; it's black hole of a sibling. Folks, don't eat the dark holes in spacetime. We also look at this week's news, including lumpy planets, forming planets, asteroids getting up close and personal, and how Leopard spots are in style for life hunting Mars Scientists. We also have tales from the launch pad.

In this week's episode, we take a look at the impact SpaceX launches from the Space Coast will have on their competitors and those living, working, and going to school near Kennedy and Cape Canaveral. We also look at a bunch of new science discoveries, including the origins of Ryugu & Bennu, the solar system shocked itself, a new supernova that blew off an unusual number of layers before exploding, and quick updates on Psyche, Juno, JUICE, and the number of moons orbiting Uranus.

In this week's episode we take a look at all the news our outer solar system has to offer. From newly discovered outer solar system objects to intersteller comet I3/Atlas to the Peried Meteor shower, we have icy objects and absolutely no aliens (It's never aliens #IYKYK).

In this special episode we look at how volunteers throughout history have aided in scientific explorations and tell you how you can get involved with our latest community science projects.

Join us as we look at two parallel stories - the development of the Vera Rubin Observatory and the SpaceX Starship rocket. Both projects are 20 years in the making, and both were supposed to start work in 2019. Both hit new milestones in June, and it's time to review their very different progress. Also included in this episode: Tales from the launch pad.

In this episode we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Fermi Paradox by looking at a bunch of science capable of preventing and destroying civilizations. We also review our latest not-so-great attempts to land on the moon and launch a rocket that (if it worked) could carry us to Mars.

This week, we take a closer look at the weirdly twisty search for a possible planet in our outer solar system. We'll also take in the happy science of aurorae here, at Jupiter, and over Neptune, as well as a bunch of weird discoveries that has some people screaming "It's Aliens!" (it's not aliens).

In this week's closer look we are going to look at the earth-facing missions that are getting dragged down by our atmosphere and will be forcibly retired by physics in the next few years, again with no replacements in the works. These missions allow us to do long term monitoring of our planet, its atmosphere, and the variables that help us understand everything from weather to climate change. We also look at cool new exoplanet discoveries, the beautiful death of a star, and tales from the launch pad.

This week we look at how the elimination of science programs, projects, datasets, and funding may be shaping into an extinction-level event for US Space-related sciences. Come cry with us.

Let's take a fast-paced journey through all that's new in space and astronomy, including dark energy news, the death of supersymmetry, a closer look at remoting sensing in Earth science, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey through all that's new in space and astronomy, including new results from Perseverance Rover, Venusian Volcanism, Mars Sample Return (or not), Intuitive Machines' failure to land upright, Firefly Aerospace's amazing success with Blue Ghost, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including DESI takes a census of central blackholes, star formation in clusters, and updates on Europa Clipper, along with a deep dive into Mars science, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including a potentially killer asteroid, a new look at the history of Earth's water, and a mini-quasi-moon, along with a deep dive into climate change, and tales from the launch pad.

It's the kind of week where we feel the need to put joy into the world, and we've made the decision to just find stories to bring a smile and share them with you. And also rockets, we're bringing you all the rocket news.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru new discoveries planetary science and Cosmology. We look at Dark Comets, Io's gooey mantle, the colonization of a Ryugu sample by Earth bacteria, galaxies growing too fast too early, and more. As always, we'll also bring you tales from the launch pad.

From baby planets to ancient black holes, let's look at the week's space news, including the discovery of a planet around a still-forming star, our Sun's massive outbursts as measured by tree rings, a new catalog of white dwarfs in binary systems, and a deep dive into the possibility that black holes create dark energy. As always, we'll also bring you tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru new discoveries in past planetary destruction. From fire to ice, let's look at snowball Earth, melting permafrost, volcanoes short and long, and more. As always, we'll also bring you tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including the first results from Euclid, Roman and Rubin get ready to search for Dark Energy, a deep dive into the effects of rockets and satellites on our atmosphere, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including microscopic black holes trying to be dark matter, massive black holes firing off jets, a deep dive into Hera and Clippers journey to look at other worlds, and tales from the launch pad.

This week we're doing something we've never done before; we're dedicating the majority of the show to a single story: SpaceX's recurring failure to follow the rules, regulations, and norms of international spaceflight. We have the receipts, and we hope that you will hear us out before you hit that comment button.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including volcanic glass beads, dino prints that span the ocean, a deep dive into asteroid exploration, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including new info on the origins of the Dino Killing asteroid, a star being nommed by a star, a deep dive into Mars exploration, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including Hubble, Chandra, and VIPER face cuts/cancellations, weird exoplanet orbits, Roman gains an instrument, and tales from the launch pad.

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including how Jupiter's Great Red Spot went missing, Io's Lava Lake, Titan's coastal erosion, and this week's tales from the launch pad. We also take a close look at the discovery of the first intermediate-mass black hole in the Omega Centauri globular cluster

Let's take a fast-paced journey thru all that's new in space and astronomy, including Mars Perseverance Rover fords an ancient river, black holes sometimes form like baby stars, and this week's tales from the launch pad. We also look in detail at how JWST images reveal star formation in never-before-seen details.

Let's take a quick tour of the latest news, including updates on the Hubble Space Telescopes and single gyro operations, EUCLID's image release, an amazing new image of Io by LBT, and new calculations of Pluto's oceans. We also look in detail at plans to return humans to the moon using Starship by SpaceX and Blue Moon by Blue Origin.

In this episode, we bring you stories on how JWST - Not LIGO and Virgo - spotted the most distant Black Hole merge to date, why the search for life on other worlds gets more challenging the more we look, and we take a deep dive into the things we're doing that cause and relieve climate change.

In this episode, we're taking a closer look at Sunspot complex 3664 and the beautiful chaos that it's been creating. And because we're in a planetary science kind of mood, we're also looking at stories related to observing weather on alien worlds, the history of Mars Climate, and even how solar storms might affect that particular Red Planet.

In February, on the closest approach, NASA's Juno spacecraft was within 930 miles of the closest moon Io's surface. Since then, Juno's orbit has been shrinking, bringing the mission closer to Jupiter and away from the circling Galilean moons. Io and Juno have parted ways, and Juno is now snuggling down into tighter orbits around her Jupiter.

As scientists discover and explore the atmospheres of more and more planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, we are learning that if you can imagine it, it probably exists. In a new paper discussing the planet WASP-76b, researchers describe what appears to be a giant rainbow in the atmosphere of another world... a circular rainbow... and it's not caused by refracted starlight!

This week's episode is brought to you by last week's terrible weather. While experiencing hail and thunder IRL, we also saw press release after press release and article after article discussing climate change. This one-two punch of new science and the need for a new roof means we will touch on climate change in our closer look this week. We apologize in advance; it's not pretty out there -- unless you like storm chasing, then it's kind of the stuff of dreams at the moment.

One of our recurring topics is "Planet formation is not well understood," and a trio of new papers is making it clear why planet formation continues to... not be well understood. Put simply: the universe likes to create more diverse solar systems than an entire planet's worth of sci-fi writers can imagine.

Earlier in March, Congress voted into place the FY2024 budgets for multiple agencies, including NASA. The agency is being asked for an overall 2% cut. Combined with inflation rates over 3%, we are looking at a fairly significant cut to the U.S. budget for space science. Dr. Pamela Gay breaks down what these cuts will affect, including people and missions, as we move forward with this already stressful fiscal year. (This episode was recorded on March 14, 2024)

As you know, our team loves volcanoes, and since we've been focused on Iceland for months, we brought in Dr. Melissa Scruggs (aka VolcanoDoc on Twitch) for a chat about Grindavik and all things volcanic in Iceland.

It is possible to buy stickers, sweatshirts, mugs, and other stuff and things emblazoned with the simple phrase, "We are star stuff". This phrase was popularized by Carl Sagan, and it serves as a gentle reminder that all the complex atoms - by which I mean most everything heavier than helium - found their start either in the nuclear core of a star or in the nuclear explosions of a dying star or stars. But, as with so many things, the truth is much more complicated than the meme.

One of the unexpected realities of JWST is the discovery that we have really been asking the wrong questions in many astronomy areas. For instance: we generally asked how supermassive black holes and galaxies formed, with a basic assumption that these things happened in some interrelated process. We thought stellar mass black holes came from stars and that there might have been tiny primordial black holes that evaporated away, but that was it. Closed case. Black holes formed with all the normal structures we experience today. Except that now, JWST's observations require us to find a way to accelerate the formation of those structures, and one way to do that is to seed the universe with black holes.