150: Undersea grippers and in-space assembly with Dr. Backus
Dr Spencer Backus talks about his work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He explains the complexities of trying to design hands for robots. An example of a robot hand is the undersea gripper he wor...
5 Mai 201922min
149: Ballooning on Venus with Dr. Izraelevitz
Dr. Jacob Izraelevitz describes how engineers might design a balloon to explore Venus. This work is in the early stages, what NASA refers to as a "Mission Concept." He also explains the challenges of ...
21 Apr 201914min
148: Solving an Apollo mystery with Dr. Curren
When taking a sample of the Moon's surface, the Apollo astronauts discovered a sharp transition from powdery soil to harder rock. This transition was entirely unexpected, and remained unexplained for ...
7 Apr 201915min
147: Searching for extraterrestrial life with Dr. Seager
Dr. Seager explains how she and other astronomers are looking for extraterrestrial life. We discuss the Drake and Seager equations. We also talk about how astronomers might be able to detect life by m...
24 Mar 201919min
146: Our place the universe with Dr. Lanz
Dr. Alicia Lanz talks about the history of astronomical instrumentation, starting with the first telescope. She describes some bizarre historical telescopes and shares a surprisingly inspirational sto...
10 Mar 201931min
145: Backyard Worlds with Prof. Allers
Professor Katelyn Allers talks about how you can discover small cold stars! She is a member of the Backyard Worlds project, which is a collaboration between astronomers and citizen scientists. This pr...
24 Feb 201923min
144: Deflecting asteroids with Brent Barbee
Brent Barbee returns to the show to talk about deflecting asteroids. He explains how an asteroid might react to an impact, and also talks about the proposed DART mission, which would change the orbit ...
10 Feb 201920min
143: Telescope robots with Dr. Ramirez
Dr. Solange Ramirez returns to the show to talk about her new position as Project Manager of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V. Amount other things, the project will study over six million stars and how ...
27 Jan 201927min
