The First Space Shuttle Pilot: Bob Crippen on the 40th Anniversary of STS-1
Pilot Bob Crippen and Commander John Young became the first astronauts to fly a Space Shuttle into orbit on April 12, 1981. Crippen tells host Mat Kaplan about that mission and shares many more storie...
7 Apr 20211h 11min
Space Policy Edition: Biden Names His NASA Administrator
Bill Nelson, former Senator from Florida, congressional astronaut, and father of the Space Launch System, will likely be NASA's next administrator. Casey Dreier and Mat Kaplan also discuss The Planeta...
2 Apr 202158min
NASA’s TESS Exoplanet Mission Finds Over 2,000 Possible New Worlds
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) team has just announced more than 2,200 new exoplanet candidates. Natalia Guerrero of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology manages these discoveri...
31 Mars 202155min
The Perseverance Rover and a Great First Month on Mars
Deputy project scientists Katie Stack Morgan and Ken Williford are living on Mars time and living for Mars. We get an update from them on the work of the Mars 2020 rover. Perseverance is already accom...
24 Mars 20211h
Return From Ryugu: The Hayabusa2 Leader on His Mission’s Success
Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda and his team learned a lot from Hayabusa1, Japan’s troubled-though-successful mission that returned a sample from asteroid Itokawa. Now they are celebrating the ...
17 Mars 202151min
InSight’s Mole: A Martian Science Odyssey
Troy Hudson and a brilliant international team created a device that would hammer its way below the surface of Mars. Mars had other ideas. The Jet Propulsion Lab engineer and scientist returns to tell...
10 Mars 202155min
Space Policy Edition: SpaceX's Early, Desperate Days (with Eric Berger)
The SpaceX of today reuses rockets and launches people into space. But 15 years ago, the future of the company was in doubt as its Falcon 1 rocket repeatedly failed to reach orbit. Eric Berger, Senior...
5 Mars 20211h 1min
Spinoffs: How NASA Technologies Benefit Life on Earth
Cleaning up water pollution, inventing inexpensive ventilators for hospitals, turning waste plastic into sidewalks, and making baby formula more nutritious—these and thousands of other innovations hav...
3 Mars 202151min
