Paul Hill, Ralph Wilkins and Jenifer Millard host. Damien Phillips and John Wildridge produce.

The Discussion: As it’s the holiday season, we get all Christmassy (Happy Newtonmas!) and take a brief detour from space into seasonal songs, the unseemly side of glam rock and Bavarian burn hazards. Ralph reviews the Mars inspired TV show, "The First", and we run through some listeners’ emails.

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

- Farewell Kepler

- Farewell Dawn

- Apollo 2 (Orion) gets a step closer

- NASA send a new mission to Mars

- Where is SpaceX’s Starman now? https://www.whereisroadster.com/

- The International Space Station turns 20 years old.

Main news story: NASA’s Mars 2020 rover now has a landing site.

The Interview: Physicist and Associate editor at Nature, Dr. Dave Abergel, joins us in the studio to discuss crystals, graphene, peer review, magnetic monopoles and dark matter.

Physics of Christmas Q&A: We take our regular seasonal look at the issues that aren’t important enough to care much about any other time of year. This year we ask Why is Rudolph’s nose red?

http://www.awesomeastronomy.com

Bio: Awesome Astronomy is a podcast beamed direct from an underground bunker on Mars to promote science, space and astronomy (and enslave Earth if all goes well).

 

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