Looking Up

Looking Up continues celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, this time by learning more about the entire Apollo mission with Nancy Atkinson , a writer for Universe Today and author of the new book, Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Mission .

As the world prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, we go to the hometown of celebrated Astronaut Neil Armstrong so that Dean Regas and Anna Hehman can talk with Dante Cenouri , executive director of the Armstrong Air & Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio. Listen to their conversation by hitting the play button above.

Dr. Janet Kavandi is a three-time shuttle astronaut, former Director of Flight Operations for NASA, and currently serves as director of NASA's John H. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. In addition, she was recently inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame . Dean Regas and Anna Hehman are proud to welcome Dr. Kavandi to this episode of Looking Up .

What started as a hobby, to create a website about his passion for amateur astronomy, has now turned into a 20-year career. Fraser Cain , proprietor of the Universe Today website, Astronmycast podcast, and the live Weekly Space Hangout , joins Dean Regas and Anna Hehman to talk about the evolution of these projects and what continues to make it fun after all this time.

The first picture of a black hole was a worldwide phenomenon, but what is our fascination with these astronomical mysteries? Dean Regas and Anna Hehman welcome Nathaniel Scharping , an editor for Discover magazine who wrote about the black hole photograph for Astronomy magazine and astronomy.com.

Did you know that there is an observatory at the Vatican? Did you now that the two men in charge of the research and operations taking place there are both from the Midwest? In this transatlantic conversation, Dean Regas and Anna Hehman learn about the Vatican Observatory from its director, Brother Guy Consolmagno (from Detroit) and head of the Jesuit community at the observatory, Father Paul Mueller (from Cincinnati, a St. Xavier High School graduate).

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will, when it's operational, conduct a 10-year survey of the sky to provide an amazing amount of data to help answer ongoing questions about our universe.

With the changing relationships between the US and countries once considered threats, concerns about the use of weapons in space remain. Dean Regas and Anna Hehman delve into these concerns with Theresa Hitchens , former director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research and now Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland .

The recent demise of the Mars Rover Opportunity recalled an article from The Atlantic from 2017 that discussed the humanization of these robots in the minds of many . Dean Regas and Anna Hehman welcome the scientist interviewed in that article, Florence Tan , currently the deputy chief technologist of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

A recent article on Space.com caught our attention, so this episode we're talking with the author of that article, Our Milky Way Will Crash into a Neighbor Galaxy Sooner Than You Think , Dr. Michael Wall . He's a senior writer for Space.com and also author of the book Out There: A Scientific Guide to Alien Life, Antimatter, and Human Space Travel (For the Cosmically Curious) , so you know he had a lot to talk about with Dean Regas and Anna Hehman.