This month Hannah, Andrew & Hugh are joined by NASA Goddard’s space telescope expert, Dr. Knicole Colón. Fresh from her NASA TV appearance unveiling JWST’s first exoplanet spectrum to the world, the JWST Deputy Project Scientist for Exoplanet Science gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the big day, as well as how the team got JWST ready for science. She also discusses the ongoing TESS mission searching for new planets, as well as the Pandora small-sat designed to look at exoplanet atmospheres on a budget, both of which Knicole is also managing. And we hear about her origins as a space scientist, from the movie Contact, to a project at Arecibo, through the KELT planet-hunting survey, and to her first taste of NASA project management at the Kepler GO office. And, as always, we also hear which planet Knicole will adopt into our growing exoplanetary hall-of-fame.

Want to know more about Dr Colón’s work? Check out her NASA bio and tweets @super_knova.

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Exocast is edited by composer/muscian Fergus Hall (https://www.fergushallmusic.com) and supported in part by funding from the University of Bristol via H.Wakeford starter funds.