Ep. 364: The COROT Mission
Before NASA’s Kepler mission searched for exoplanets using the transit method, there was the European COROT mission, launched in 2006. It was sent to search for planets with short orbital periods and find solar oscillations in stars. It was an incredibly productive mission, and the focus of today’s show.
Ep. 363: Where Did Earth's Water Come From?
Where on Earth did our water come from. Well, obviously not from Earth, of course, but from space. But did it come from comets, or did the water form naturally right here in the Solar System, and the Earth just scooped it up?
Ep. 362: Modern Women: Carolyn Porco
It hard to think of a more influential modern planetary scientist than Carolyn Porco, the leader of the imaging team for NASA’s Cassini mission exploring Saturn. But before Cassini, Porco was involved in Voyager missions, and she’ll be leading up the imaging team for New Horizons.
Ep. 361: Modern Women: Maria Zuber
Maria Zuber is one of the hardest working scientists in planetary science, being a part of six different space missions to explore the Solar System. Currently, she’s the lead investigator for NASA’s GRAIL mission.
Ep. 360: Modern Women: Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Jocelyn Bell Burnell is an Irish astronomer, best known for being part of the team that discovered pulsars, and the following controversy when she was excluded from the Nobel Prize winning team.
Ep. 359: Modern Women: Margaret Geller
Margaret Geller is best known for her work on the large scale structure of the Universe, helping us understand the large clusters, super clusters and cosmic filaments that matter clumps into.
Ep. 358: Modern Women: Sandra Faber
Our focus on female astronomers continues with Sandra Faber, and Professor of Astronomy at UC Santa Cruz. Faber was part of the team that turned up the Great Attractor, a mysterious mass hidden by the disk of the Milky Way.
Ep. 357: Modern Women: Vera Rubin
It’s time for another series. This time we’ll be talking about famous female astronomers. Starting with: Vera Rubin, who first identified the fact that galaxies rotate too quickly to hold themselves together, anticipating the discovery of dark matter.
Ep. 356: Rotational Inertia
An object at rest stays at rest, and object in motion tends to stay in motion. This is inertia, defined famously by Isaac Newton in his First Law of Motion.
Ep. 355: Maker Space: 3D Printing Exploration
Getting stuff into space is complicated and expensive. And what do you do when your fancy space gadget breaks. You print out a new one, of course, with your fancy space 3D printer. It turns out, space exploration is one of the best uses for this technology.