The Space Show

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 31 January 2024: The demise of Ingenuity: Marking the end of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, comments by Bill Nelson (NASA Administrator); media teleconference briefing and Q&A. (Inserts courtesy NASA) SLIM awake again: After taking a tumble, SLIM is awake again. A full report from JAXA on what happened to SLIM. Celestis Memorial Flights: Human remains were aboa...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 24 January 2024: Artemis: Return to the Moon — Part 2 The Space Show’s Andrew Rennie continues his conversation with Space Association of Australia Committee member, Angelo Di Grazia ( @GoCats2007 ) about the delay to the Artemis II and Artemis III crewed lunar missions and the future of the Artemis lunar exploration program, including commentary on: Orion heat shi...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 17 January 2024: Peregrine 1: The perilous flight of the falcon The Space Show examines the failure of the Peregrine 1 lunar lander after a successful launch on the maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket. Artemis II & III Delay with Angelo Di Grazia ( @GoCats2007 ) Angelo discusses the announcement that the Artemis II and Artemis III crewed lunar missions h...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 10 January 2024: SpIRIT in the Sky: The Space Show in conversation with Clint Therakam, Thermal Engineer, Melbourne Space Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, discussing the SpIRIT satellite , its experiments, and Clint’s role in the project. Also, his work on the design of the Australian Roo-ver lunar rover. Space Show News — Artemis and Peregrine 1: Announc...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 3 January 2024: The loss of the Mars Polar Lander: The story of the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, which was launched 25 years ago today. (Audio inserts courtesy JPL) Moon Month — SLIM and Peregrine 1: This month will see the attempted landing of Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon or SLIM near Shioli Crater on the Moon, and the launch of Astrobotic's...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 27 December 2023: Apollo 8: The Journey Home The homeward journey, President Johnson's remarks, and musical tributes. Final call to send your “Message in a Bottle” to Jupiter aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft SLIM and Peregrine 1 The arrival into lunar orbit of Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) lunar lander, and a description of the inst...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 20 December 2023: Planet Earth — Season 4 Episode 58: Launch of iQPS-SAR-5, otherwise known as Tsukuyomi 1, by an Electron rocket from New Zealand, with a synthetic aperture radar to collect high-resolution images of the Earth. Skylab 4 — Part II: Continued from last week, how the three Skylab 4 crewmen earned the one-armed paper-hanger's award, played midwife...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 13 December 2023: Space News: * Neumann Space electric propulsion engine successfully tested in space aboard an unidentified Skykraft 3 air traffic control satellite. * Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is scheduled to launch the Earth-imaging satellite QPS-SAR-5 * Sydney based company HEO is a space technology company delivering on-demand non-Earth imagery and intellig...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 6 December 2023: SpIRIT launched: The Sp ace I ndustry R esponsive I ntelligent T hermal satellite, or SpIRIT, was launched for the Melbourne Space Laboratory by a Falcon 9 rocket after pre-launch secrecy. (Audio inserts courtesy Melbourne University, SpaceX, Neumann Space) Message in a bottle: Join the mission and have your name engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper s...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 29 November 2023: Space Show News InSight Mars Lander : Marking the 5th anniversary of the landing of the InSight spacecraft on Mars (Audio inserts courtesy BBC, DLR) WRESAT (Weapons Research Establishment Satellite) : With the launch of Melbourne University's SpIRIT satellite pending, a look back to the launch, 56 years ago, of WRESAT and six years ago of Bucc...

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 t...

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 Ho...

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: Australia and US formalise a Technology Safeguards Agreement . The Hon Dr Kevin Rudd AC, Australia’s Ambassador to the United States signed the treaty-...

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 Informa...

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 Europe...

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 mi...

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 20...

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 sum...

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 add...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 6 September 2023: NASA’s sounding rocket launch campaign from the Arnhem Space Centre in Australia — High Above Down Under: Episode 3: UV Light – More Than Just Sunburns Episode 4: The Final Test 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...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 30 August 2023: Chandrayaan-3 on a Super Blue Full Moon — On the evening of a Super Blue Moon, a recounting of the landing of India's Vikram lander from the Chandrayaan-3 mission on the southern region of the Moon. (Audio inserts courtesy of ISRO) NASA’s 2023 sounding rocket launch campaign from the Arnhem Space Centre in Australia — High Above Down Under (a si...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 23 August 2023: A Roundup of Australian Space News: Equatorial Launch Australia signs up Innospace entX prototype radioisotope heater Plants for Space Neumann Space and CarbSAR Southern Launch planning permit for the Koonibba suborbital test range. Chinese satellites over Australia: Reports that China's Yaogan and Jilin satellites were 'spying' on Austr...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 16 August 2023: Space Show News: Aditya-L1: India’s first solar mission expected to launch on 26 August Updates on the progress of Chandrayaan-3 and Luna 25 missions Where should the Artemis program land on the Moon? Harrison Schmitt, geologist and Apollo 17 astronaut makes his recommendations on where Artemis should land, the science questions and priorities to be...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 9 August 2023: Space Show News: Chandrayaan-3 Luna 25 Chang'e 7 Euclid Aeolus mission ends The third stage of a Russian Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M rocket makes a fiery re-entry over Melbourne, Australia Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: The testimony of David Grusch to the United States Congress on UAPs, their possible origin, a dozen retrieved crashed UAPs, and non-h...