Spacepod

Dr. Robert Hurt stops by the podcast to talk about his job making visuals to explain complicated astronomical concepts. We chat about multiverses, gravitational waves, and Cameron Diaz's love for NASA.

Dr Andy Rivkin and I drink gin and tonics, and Andy explains what spectroscopy is and what it can teach us about minerals on asteroids. He also describes what it's like to use some of the world's most powerful telescopes.

Dr. Tim Sphar, CEO of NEO Sciences and former director of the Minor Planet Center, stops by the show to talk about how asteroids are cataloged and monitored. He also talks about his experience the day tiny asteroid 2008 TC3 impacted Earth.

Dr Cable returns to the show to talk about why scientists often assume that water is needed to sustain life. She explains why most life, like us, likely is carbon-based, and talks about where she'd look for lifeforms beyond our planet.

Dr. Katherine Kretke investigates how planets are formed with computer models. Her new research had a surprising result— that pebbles play a key role in forming terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars.

Paulo Younse has spent over 5 years studying hermetic seals for tubes. But these aren't just any tubes— there the tubes that will travel to Mars and carry rocks back to Earth. He describes the challenges of designing the perfect tubes for this ambitious venture.

Dr. Heather Kaluna talks about space weathering, which changes the surfaces of the moon, asteroids, and Mercury. She studies space weathering in a laboratory, where she can reproduce hundreds of millions of years of weathering in just forty minutes.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the biggest astronomy project in the world right now. It's an amazingly complex robot, and some of its sensors need to be kept cool. Dr Kris Stone talks about the cooling system, and how it will be tested during the longest continuous test ever conducted at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Dr. Lauren White talks about designing and building instruments for the International Space Station (ISS). She shares a secret about designing instruments for the outside of the space station, and also talks about being the first American to command a laser on the ISS.

Dr Morgan Cable comes back on the podcast to tell us about how she and a team of scientists searched a fresh lava field in Iceland to look for signs of life. They pretended to see the landscape like a rover would, so that the lessons they learned in Icela

Dr. James "Gerbs" Bauer talks about comets, the icy dirtballs (or dirty iceballs) that orbit the Sun. We talk about the ancient Egyptian term for comets, why you probably shouldn't eat a comet, and an exciting new discovery made by the NEOWISE team.

The New Horizons mission revealed Pluto's jaw-dropping vistas and geophysical mysteries. One listener wanted to know why the spacecraft didn't go into orbit around Pluto. Tom Spilker, interplanetary travel expert, tells us the answer.

In part 2, engineers who worked on the Galileo probe discuss what it was like when the probe entered Jupiter's atmosphere. This episode includes a bonus story about Pioneer Venus.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the successful deployment of a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, this episode is a series of interviews with the engineers who worked on this challenging, historic mission.

Dr. George Privon talks about what galaxies are and what happens when two galaxies merge.

Dr. Dan Petrizzo explains what isotopes are, and what isotopes in water can tell scientists about ancient climates. He also explains how he made Mars rocks in the lab.

Professor Amy Lovell talks about listening in on radio waves coming from comets, as well as the particular challenges of using the world's biggest radio telescopes.

Professor Bethany Ehlmann discusses how to pick a landing site for NASA's next Mars rover, Mars 2020. Over a particularly good beer, we also cover looking for life on Mars, and she answers the thorny question: why look for life on Mars, which has little

Dr Bonnie Buratti talks about Pluto's big mystery: What is the source of energy that is causing all the active geology seen by New Horizons?

Dr. Jessica Watkins talks about enormous landslides on Mars that are millions of years old.

Dr. Michael Busch talks about the strange, low gravity surfaces of asteroids, and the challenges a visiting astronaut might face.

Dr. Britney Schmidt tells us about how she can learn about they icy, watery moon Europa by exploring giant Antarctic ice shelves with submarines.

Dr Jeff Rich talks about where elements come from, and the famous phrase, "We are all made of star stuff".

Dr. Linda Spilker discusses the Cassini Spacecraft; what it looks like, what it has discovered, and plans for the conclusion of the mission.

Emily Lakdawalla talks about UnmannedSpaceflight.com, a place where everyday people explore the solar system by processing images from robotic spacecraft.

Dr. Amy Mainzer discusses how she and her team calculated how many asteroids are out in space, waiting to be discovered.

Dr. Barbara Cohen discusses craters on our moon, and how they will be explored by a new NASA mission called Lunar Flashlight.

Dr Paddack, one of the discoverers of the YORP effect, tells some funny stories from his time at NASA.

Brent Barbee discusses how he figures out which asteroids astronauts could fly to, and the fun of solving problems using computers.

Dr. Nancy Chabot tells us about the MESSENGER mission, which explored the closest planet to the sun.

Rob Landis talks about operating the Hubble Space Telescope, and the time he had a front-row seat to a dramatic interplanetary collision.

Dr. Kirkpatrick talks about stars so cold you could touch them without getting burned.

Dr. Sarah Noble talks about the LADEE mission and an epiphany she had in graduate school.

Dr. Abby Fraeman talks about Phobos and Deimos, the mysterious moons of Mars.

Dr. Joseph Masiero talks about the "secret" property of light, and how astronomers use it to learn about exoplanets and asteroids.

On this week's episode, Dr. Morgan Cable of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory talks about Saturn's moon Titan, and how she creates mini Titan lakes in her laboratory.