In this episode, we talk all about JUICE, the European Space Agency mission that launches today April 13 to study the Icy moons of Jupiter (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) and the Jovian system - and also why I am in Germany to make a mocktail!

Our Christmas Special this year is a little tale of realistic sci-fi, set just a few years from now. An astronaut is being interrogated about the events that took place in a space station around the Moon: The Gateway. Playing the characters are Chris and Alfredo, with a cameo from the ever-wonderful Katy Evans.

Measuring the length of a day on Earth is relatively easy thanks to the Sun and stars. But it isn't as easy on some of the other planets, and astronomers had to get pretty clever to actually achieve those measurements. We spoke to Dr Chris Mankovich who was able to measure the length of a day on Saturn via an ingenious method.

We got to play with a Unistellar telescope and even collect data about an exoplanet, to learn we talked with Unistellar Chief Scientific Officer Dr Franck Marchis

In the zone of avoidance, far from us, something is pulling the Milky Way and so many other galaxies. It is time to meet The Great Attractor, a fascinating gravitational object.

In this episode, we turn back time to the moment known as cosmic dawn ready to understand the first stars and how they changed the Universe. A guiding light in this journey is Dr Emma Chapman, author of the book First Light.

On Earth, quakes are caused by the motion of the tectonic plates. Quakes also happen on the Moon and Mars without them, and Chris is curious to find out how they occur as well as to listen to one of these outer-world quakes. 

In this episode, Chris is curious about a particular technique that allows building virtual radio telescopes the size of our planet, like the Event Horizon Telescope. So we invited an expert to tell us about radio interferometry and the Square Kilometer Array, the project that will push radio astronomy to new heights. 

There is something wrong with our model of the Universe. New data suggests that our assumptions about the cosmos are not all correct. Join us as we unravel the tension in the expansion rate of the Universe.

Pulsars are the focus of this episode and we speak to radio astronomer Rami Mandow over in Australia to discuss how precise measurements of these fascinating objects have been used as a galaxy-spanning gravitational wave observatory.