On The Space Show for Wednesday, 22 November 2023:

Marking the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, this special episode of The Space Show plays and interprets both JFK’s public speeches about space in 1963 and the secretly recorded private Oval Office conversations in which space was discussed.

These recordings reveal the president’s doubts and conflicted attitude towards space activity, particularly the Apollo manned lunar landing program, and his advocacy for cooperation in space with the Soviet Union, all the while with an eye on the forthcoming 1964 presidential election. (Audio inserts and transcripts courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 8 November 2023:

Remembering Thomas Kenneth Mattingly II: American aviator, aeronautical engineer, test pilot, rear admiral in the United States Navy, and astronaut who flew as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 16 and Space Shuttle Commander on the STS-4 and STS-51-C missions. Ken Mattingly, helped bring the Apollo 13 mission home safely. (Inserts courtesy AAB)

New Horizons: Beyond Pluto:

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 1 November 2023:

Marking the 15th anniversary of the last contact with the Phoenix Mars Lander, the story of the mission told from the perspective of the Canadian Space Agency (Inserts courtesy CSA)

Space Show News:

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 18 October 2023:

Lucy Mission to fly by asteroid Dinkinesh:

The flyby, which will see Lucy pass within just 300 miles (480 km) of Dinkinesh, will combine science and engineering goals as the craft both reveals this small world to humanity and performs a rigorous first test of its innovative Terminal Tracking System.

Planet Earth - Season 4 Episode 56:

Earth Information Center; COVID, cars and temperatures; Landsat observes Amazon deforestation; EMIT observes mineral dust; astronaut Nicole Stott observes thunderstorms; CALIPSO decommissioned; SuomiNPP and NOAA 20 observe "milky sea" bioluminescence; Gavin Schmidt (Director, Goddard Institute for Space Sciences) on the 2023 July Global Temperature Report; MAIA to be launched next year; PolSIR approved; atmospheric ozone primer. (Inserts courtesy GSFC, NASA, AGU)

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 18 October 2023:

Space Show News: Shenzhou 17 to launch to the Tiangong space station on 26 October

55th anniversary of Apollo 7: Walter Cunningham, Apollo 7 astronaut, relates the story of the splashdown of the first manned Apollo mission 55 years ago. (Insert courtesy AAB)

Gail Illes, RMIT University, Melbourne and Andrea Boyd, ISS Flight Controller at the European Space Agency, Germany discuss: human spaceflight in the age of private spaceflight; space beer from Australia; food; mental health; astronaut qualifications and working in the space industry. (Recorded at Scienceworks, Spotswood)

Psyche Launched: The launch of the Psyche spacecraft, and how it will study asteroid 16 Psyche. (Inserts courtesy JPL)

NASA’s Mark Kirasich, Deputy Associate Administrator, Artemis Campaign Development Division and Prasun Desai, Deputy Associate Administrator, Space Technology Mission Directorate on the Artemis 3 mission plan: technology development; powering Artemis; contingencies. (Inserts courtesy NASA)

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 11 October 2023:

Heavy Metal with Lindy Elkins-Tanton, Principal Investigator - Psyche mission, Arizona State University:

The scientific objectives of the Psyche mission to the asteroid 16 Psyche.

Back to the Moon and Artemis with Angelo Di Grazia, Committee member, Space Association of Australia:

The problems in launching the Artemis 1 circumlunar mission; the mission plan for the Artemis 3 human lunar landing; and the mission risks associated with the Starship architecture.

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 4 October 2023:

Marking the anniversary of the formation of NASA, and the first decade of manned spaceflight (Mercury to Apollo 8), in spoken feature, poetry and song.

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 27 September 2023:

Space Show News

Soyuz MS-23 returns to Earth:

Russia's Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and NASA's Frank Rubio landed in their Soyuz MS-23 capsule at 11:17 UTC on 27 September on the Steppe of Kazakhstan after spending more than a year living aboard the International Space Station. The trio launched to the space station on 21 September 2022.

A competition to name Australia’s lunar rover:

The Australian Space Agency, in partnership with NASA, is working with Australia’s space industry to design and build an Australian-made rover. The rover will go to the Moon as part of a future Artemis mission by as early as 2026. Australians can enter a name that will be in the running to be selected for the rover. Individuals and schools across Australia can enter a rover name, along with a brief explanation for choosing it. To get Australian students excited and engaged in the opportunity, schools can download a presentation and supporting materials.

Space Shuttle Discovery — Return to Flight:

The 35th anniversary of the STS 26 mission by the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery, the first after the STS 51-L Challenger disaster, told in word and music. (Audio inserts courtesy NASA)

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 20 September 2023:

Is there life on exoplanet Kepler K2-18b?

Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, reports the discovery of methane, carbon dioxide and the possible detection of the biomarker dimethyl sulphide on an exoplanet, using the James Webb Space Telescope. (Audio insert courtesy STScI)

OSIRIS-REx — Journey's End:

A summary of the OSIRIS-REx mission to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu, and plans for Sunday's landing in Utah. (Audio insert courtesy GSFC)

Hubble Tension:

The age of the Universe is estimated by two main methods: Locally (Parallax-Cepheids-Supernovae-Redshift) and Cosmic Microwave Background (COBE, Planck). The problem is they give two different measures for the Hubble Constant, and hence the age of the Universe. This feature looks back on COBE, and has a talk by Nobel Prize winner Adam Riess on his use of the James Webb Space Telescope to refine the measure of the Hubble Constant. (Audio inserts courtesy NASA, STScI)

Trolls, UAPs and NASA:

The internet trolls made NASA initially suppress the name of the director of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena research. (Audio insert courtesy NASA)

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 13 September 2023:

James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Methane and Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere of a Habitable-zone Exoplanet: K2-18b

A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface.

Lunar Orbit Rendezvous or "How to land on the Moon" by Andrew Rennie

The options for the Apollo lunar landing mode, and how the decision was reached. (Re-recorded from a presentation to a meeting of the Space Association of Australia in 2019)

The culmination of the launch campaign for NASA sounding rockets from the Arnhem Space Centre — High Above Down Under:

Join Miles Hatfield, a science writer at the Goddard Spaceflight Centre in Greenbelt Maryland, as he follows two NASA rocket teams as they launch from Australia. Studying our nearest stellar neighbours – Alpha Centauri A & B – on a quest to understand how stars make the planets around them suitable for life. (audio inserts courtesy GSFC)