Ground Control #5
What Saturn is hiding, Lauren Lyons on the commercial space industry, asteroid sampling, and how your high school physics class has totally ruined your way of perceiving the universe.
Welcome to Ground Control. This is our fifth edition of a brand-new newsletter that was born out of our love for the intersection of space + podcasting. Because as much as we love to write and talk about space – we also love to listen to space…news. Because you can’t listen to space. Unless it’s a ripple of hot star gas.
Today, we have four episode recommendations.
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Let’s get into it.
Astronomy
Planetary Radio
“What’s Hidden Inside Planets?”
Talking to all you LOTR fans out there - ever wonder what is going on inside a planet’s interior? In this latest installment of the show, Host Sarah Al-Ahmed interviews Sabine Stanley, professor of planetary physics at Johns Hopkins University and author of What’s Hidden Inside Planets? about the surprising things that hang out beneath the surface of the planets in our local solar neighborhood. Did anyone else know that Jupiter has a fuzzy interior? Or that Earth has a blobby mantle? These worlds…they really are just like us.
Episode hot take: Venus is the worst planet. Yep, you heard that right. Professor Stanley said the hot, dense planet is also notoriously “uncooperative.” Pretty sure that just means Venus is the boss bitch of the solar system…but maybe we’ll agree to disagree here.
Another reason to tune in? The episode starts with an update on what happened with Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander (in case you need to catch up) as well as an update on the recent NASA announcement about delaying the timeline on Artemis 2 & 3.
Love a mix of policy with your astronomy? Then scroll back to Planetary Radio’s Jan 5th space policy episode, “India’s growing space ambitions.”
Here’s how to access:
Space Exploration
Houston We Have a Podcast
“Return of OREx: Part III”
What does 16 years and thousands of hardworking people get you? A historic and groundbreaking (or asteroid breaking) mission that has brought a sample of asteroid Bennu back to Earth. Scientists hope that studying the sample will help answer whether asteroids colliding with Earth are the anonymous donor that we can thank for water and other life-supporting ingredients. So yeah, kind of a big deal.
Host Gary Jordan interviews Osiris Rex co-investigators Lindsay Keller and Anne Wynn on the pod for behind-the-scenes perspective, science of astromaterials, engineering feats that made this mission possible, and some pretty palpable pride (deservedly so). Tune in for an interesting and in-depth conversation that highlights just how valuable a pristine asteroid sample can be to a researcher.
Here’s how to access:
Industry
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