Episode 802: Ripples on the Cosmic Pond.

This

week we take a journey from the halls of Congress out through our solar

system, and then journey out to a point 1.3 billion light years away

from home. On February3rd, the Space Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

met to discuss the current status of NASA’s Journey to Mars, and how it

may survive past the current presidential administration. We examine

the winners and losers in the 2017 NASA budget proposal. NASA announces the Exploration Mission 1 Launch Director and we discuss the Cygnus OA-6 Mission launch delay. The Year In Space increment on board the International Space Station is coming into the home stretch, while back on Earth, the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is completed. European

Space Agency’s Rosetta mission continues, but without the Philae lander

that made landfall on Comet 67P in November. There has been no response

from Philae since July and ESA has announced they will stop trying to contact the spacecraft. We discuss some of the highlights and lessons learned from this milestone mission.  NASA releases  a terrain map of Pluto’s ‘heart’ region, based on New Horizon’s spacecraft data , revealing a few big surprises. The

final story: the discovery of gravitational waves from the collision of

two massive black holes. These waves reached our own planet this past

September and were detected by the freshly-upgraded advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO),

providing the first proof of parts of Albert Einstein’s theory of

general relativity. What does this mean and why is it so exciting? We

break it down for you The LIGO comic by Talcott Starr discussed in the episode can be found here and make sure to give it a like if you enjoy it.Host: Sawyer RosensteinPanelists: Kat Robison and Kassy Tamanini