Astronomy Cast

AstronomyCast 352: Water, Water Everywhere

by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay

Live from DragonCon 2014! Fraser and Pamela are joined by Les Johnson, Scott Edgington, Erin MacDonald, Roy Kilgard, and Fraser bombards all of these wonderful scientists with the hardest, most complicated questions he can come up with!

AstronomyCast Live from DragonCon 2014

by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay

AstronomyCast 351: Asteroid Adventures

by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay

Astronomy Cast’s 2014/15 season begins! With Rosetta’s arrival at Comet 67/P, we’re about to see a comet up close and personal. What will it take to explore, exploit and enjoy the asteroids and comets hurtling around our Solar System. And how does science fiction have it all wrong??

AstronomyCast 350: SpaceShip One

by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay

AstronomyCast 349: Mercury 7 Astronauts

by Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay

SpaceShipOne is the spacecraft created by Scaled Composites to win the $10 million Ansari X-Prize in 2003. It was the first privately built spacecraft to reach 100 km in altitude, twice in two weeks, carrying the equivalent of 3 people. It’s the prototype of the upcoming SpaceShipTwo, created for Virgin Galactic to carry paying passengers into space.

Before the Apollo Program, there was the Gemini Program, and before Gemini came the Mercury Program. 7 elite astronauts chosen from a pool of military test pilots. How did NASA choose these original 7 men?

Although NASA is spread across the entire US, the headquarters is based right in Washington, DC. And the headquarters building is known as Two Independence Square. This is where past and future space policy for the agency was developed.