TMRO:Space

NASA's MAVEN Magnetometer Instrument Lead Dr. Jared Espley joins us to talk about MAVEN, Juno and how we measure the magnetism of planets in our local system.

More information on MAVEN can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.htmlAnd more information on Juno can be found here: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

This week we bring on Dr. Jielai Zhang to talk about Dragonfly Telephoto Array, its unique capabilities, why it was needed and what they have found or hope to find out so far. We also cover the role of astronomy as a gateway field to STEM and the West African International Summer School for Young Astronomers program.

A lot of stuff happened in our local system this week! In Traffic the Beresheet suffered a rapid unintended kinetic disassembly and Falcon Heavy launched, landed and then the center core tipped over.

In news: The Stratolaunch Carrier Aircraft took to the skies and we get to see the image of a black hole for the first time!

As always we wrap the show up with space weather.

Engineer Brittany Zimmerman of Paragon Space Development Corporation joins us to talk about the different ways Space wants to kill you. We cover how Paragon is working on Life Support And Environmental Control Systems, including water purification to help keep us all alive on out journey to Mars. This one is an eye opener including a lot of stuff that will be required if us ugly giant bags of mostly water are to colonize the solar system.

This week in Space News from TMRO we have:RocketLab announces their Photon satellite systemUS Spacewalk 53, Space Suit MixupMilky Way Weight

There were 2 Soyuz launches in Space Traffic and of course the Space Weather Woman Dr. Tamitha Skov brings is our Space Weather.

The always energetic and information powerhouse Dr. Kirby Runyon joins us to talk about New Horizons, Yuris Night and announces the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab Interstellar Probe. It's a really fun and exciting interview, and we had a bit of stuff we missed in After Dark so we left a bit of that in there at the end as well.

This week we are joined by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Program Scientist Dr. Eric Smith. We talk about the most ambitious space telescope project humans have ever undertaken, and why when we get the first images back it will likely just be 18 fuzzy blobs.

Sorry this is later than normal, but we had a lot going on and I wanted to get it in the show. This week we have NASA's plans to send humans back to the moon in 5 years. Will it be on SLS or a commercial rocket?

Asteroid Bennu looks to be a lot more complex than originally thought, and that may spell trouble for OSIRIS-REx.

And what is the latest way that space wants to kill you? Superbugs!

In Traffic this week we had:Vega rocket with PRISMAOneWeb OS-M launch with CubesatsElectron launch with R3D2

And as always we close out our show with the latest Space Weather from Dr. Tamitha Skov.

Momentus is building the in-space equivalent of the connecting flight. Use a big rocket to fly to a common orbit on a cheap rideshare, then use their in-space rocket to get your satellite to any custom orbit 10 times cheaper than what has ever been possible.

Space historian and author Rod Pyle joins us once more to talk about  settling our solar system via Space 2.0. We go in to the private space  sector, NASA and the recent SLS/Orion announcements as well as some fun  stories from Rod.  

If you're interested in Rod Pyle's books you can see those here: https://www.pylebooks.com/  

Or for more information on the National Space Society, you can read up and join them here: https://space.nss.org/