Download Episode!

The Discussion: The privations of a PhD student, listeners’ comments sparking a couple of corrections from the last episode, another bout of potaytoes/potartoes and we hear that new revelations about space mirrors cult sci-fi.

The News: Rounding up the space exploration news this month we have:

• Damage to cartilage from microgravity
• The big debate in space exploration appears to be ‘is Daniella Westbrook the ideal astronaut experiment’?
• ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter kills the excitement over methane on Mars.
• NASA asks for an additional $1.6Bn for getting astronauts to Mars by 2024
• NASA will be sending a woman to the moon in the Project Artemis crew
• A look at the return to the moon blueprint

Main news story: The Lunar Gateway, an orbiting platform around the moon.

The Debate: Court is in session for the first round of advocacy for to find the winner in your top ten historic space missions. Which will make it through and which will consigned to the dustbin of history – Cassini Huygens or New Horizons?

Q&A: At 6 million kelvin, is the plasma around the M87 supermassive black hole still a plasma? Andy Burns from the UK