AirSpace

Raise a glass and cheers to a new season of AirSpace! And to help us get in the celebratory mood, today's episode is about a truly intoxicating period of American history – prohibition. You might know [we didn’t] that NASCAR has its roots in bootleggers driving illicit hooch in the 1920s. But it turns out, not all bootleggers were driving their contraband around in cars. In addition to rum runners...

We’re just two weeks away from a brand new season of AirSpace!  Today, though, we’re revisiting a favorite from May 2020 – the first installment of the AirSpace Movie Club, our very first episode recorded from our respective pandemic bunkers. At this point, we’re old hands at remote recording and thankfully our techniques have improved since this first go round but we love this episode nonetheless...

We’re hard at work on Season 5 (launching this September!) but before then, we’re giving you a second bite at a topic we spent a long time thinking about this year: what’s in a name? Earlier this season we explored how planetary bodies and their geological features get named. And to our surprise, it’s not all Greek and Roman mythology (we’re looking at you, Titan’s hills Gandalf and Bilbo). We als...

We have a flair for the dramatic here at AirSpace (Who… US?!). And we’d be lying if we told you we don’t occasionally daydream about the end of the world. But, like, scientifically speaking. We’ve seen plenty of sci-fi depictions of what the end might look like, but what will actually happen when the Sun engulfs the Earth? And what does the “end of the universe” even mean? To dissect these grim qu...

Earth’s twin or Earth’s evil twin? It depends on who you ask. And no, we’re NOT talking about Mars (take a break from the news cycle, Ingenuity). We’re talking about the beautiful, enigmatic, and hot (VERY hot) VENUS. Not one but TWO NASA spacecraft are heading to Venus later this decade (NASA’s first Venus missions since the early 90s!). But, how do you study a planet whose surface is too hot for...

We’re all movie buffs here at AirSpace *gestures to extensive movie episode back catalog.* And while we’re not exactly film critics, we know what we like—and we love when people see themselves represented in their favorite stories. And a long time ago (2013), and not so far away (New Mexico), a group embarked on a quest of their own: to translate Star Wars: A New Hope into Navajo. Their goal was t...

In the early days of aviation flying was dangerous and expensive. Even if you could afford it, societal barriers in the United States kept many would-be pilots grounded. In this episode, we’re telling the story of how pioneering Black aviators improvised, innovated, and overcame those barriers to fulfill their dreams of flight. Across the U.S., Black aviators banded together to form clubs to instr...

If you’ve flown commercial, you’re familiar with the preflight safety spiel (and if you’ve only ever flown private, we wanna know why, but it’ll have to be a different episode). You know the moves: stow your tray tables, life vests are under the seat, insert the metal end into the buckle until it clicks, and please don’t forget the nearest exit may be behind you. Frequent fliers can probably recit...

Did you know the National Air and Space Museum has a huge art collection? Yeah, we keep that secret pretty well. It all STEMs (see what we did there?) from a program organized by NASA beginning in the 1960s where a small number of American artists got tons of access to launch sites, clean rooms, space suits, spacecraft—you name it, they painted it. The result was thousands of works that represente...

Any child of the 80s or 90s knows about Space Camp. Even if you didn’t attend, you likely have an image of it burned into your brain – the flight suits, the teamwork, the spinning contraption that makes you hurl (aka the multi-axis trainer). Born at the dawn of the Shuttle era, Space Camp has given nearly a million campers a taste of astronaut life, inspired thousands of students to pursue STEM fi...

Have you ever wondered how the stuff in space gets named? Sure, names like Earth, Venus, and Mars have been canon for * forever.* But lest you think naming is all about Greek and Roman mythology, think again. Six of Titan’s hills are named after Lord of the Rings characters. Seriously. These days, there’s one organization that approves and keeps track of ALL of the official names from stars and as...

Today we’re tackling something we’ve wanted to talk about for a long time (which is relative, because time and space lose all meaning there). They’re incredibly dense, super cool, and mind-bendingly-mysterious -- BLACK HOLES! But how do you imagine – let alone study—the unseeable? And seriously—what happened at the end of “Interstellar?” The concept of black holes isn’t new—scientists first theori...

Did you hear they found water on the Moon? Or was it Mars? No wait, Mercury? An asteroid? It seems like every time there’s big news from outer space, it’s that we found water some place—as traces of ice or wisps of vapor, embedded in rocks or bound up in dry-as-dirt-regolith. What’s so special about a few molecules of H20 trapped in the ground millions of miles away? How do we even spot that from...

We’ll admit that we’re getting a little nostalgic about even the most mundane aspects of air travel – like how many times the pre-flight safety video reminds you that smoking is NOT permitted onboard. But that got us thinking – that wasn’t always the case. So what changed? It took decades of research, lobbying, and litigation to prove the dangers of secondhand smoke, and a lot of that work happene...

This week the Perseverance Rover will touch down on the surface of Mars, bringing an end to its seven-month journey AND this mixtape. Once it lands, Percy will send back thousands of images, giving us Earthlings a close-up view of the Martian terrain. In 1897 author H.G. Wells imagined a different way to see Mars in his short shorty, “The Crystal Egg.” Writing around the same time as his famous no...

Welcome to Season 4 of AirSpace! Right now COVID-19 vaccines are traveling across the country and around the world – and air travel is a critical component of this supply chain. These vaccines were not only developed in record time (shout out to SCIENCE!) but some of them also have to be kept at record cold temperatures. To meet this challenge, distributors are relying on the cold chain – a supply...

Over the summer we collaborated with the artist Diplo on a companion album to his new record MMXX . It’s called Under Ancient Skies and it’s available wherever you stream music. But we also created an audio tour of the night sky for a series of small, outdoor concerts Diplo performed. It’s ethereal, it’s relaxing, and it’s just what we need to get us through the winter doldrums. Lie back, listen,...

We’re only ONE month away from the Perseverance Rover touching down on Mars! The search for life is a pillar of Mars exploration. But our search isn’t only confined to the planets of our solar system. Radio telescopes search for signals of intelligent life from far away planets, orbiting other stars. One such telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, collapsed on December 1, 2020. In his...

Season four of AirSpace is just around the corner, but we have a special bonus drop for you today! Our friends at the PBS podcast NOVA Now have been giving us a behind-the- scenes look at the work of scientists, engineers, technologists, and more who are using their work to address the most pressing questions of our time. Listen to this episode where host Alok Patel explores how satellites have sh...

What a year it has been (alt: Ugh, what a year!). Back in April, we launched our AirSpace Movie Club—and critiquing our favorite air-and-space-films was a fun way to stay in touch remotely until we could get back into the studio for Season 3. Well, 16 episodes and eight months later, we’re still recording from home, so we thought we’d end season 3 back where we started: at the movies! It’s safe to...

Interplanetary road trips take a WHILE. So for this episode of Voyages to Mars, while we cruise onward towards the Red Planet, we’re listening to some poetry that pays tribute to long duration space travel. Our selections in this episode come from Orrery , a brand-new collection from author Donna Kane that pays homage to the Pioneer 10 space probe launched by NASA in 1972. Kane was inspired by Pio...

Did you learn the constellations as a child? Odds are, if you lived in a city, you saw more stars in the classroom—or a planetarium if you were lucky—than by looking at the night sky (and if not, we’re jealous). Fact is, most of us live in places that give us a less than ideal view of the stars because of light pollution from our cities and suburbs. But keeping our skies dark is important for so m...

This month marks the 20th birthday of the International Space Station! That’s 240 straight months—which is exactly how long 2020 feels so far. We all need a little self-care these days, so in honor of the ISS anniversary, we’ll tell you about what astronaut life is like when they aren’t doing the extraordinary science, essential maintenance, and extraterrestrial chores necessary to sustain our hom...

We’re back with the fourth installment of our literary mixtape, Voyages to Mars! The Perseverance Rover is on its way to the Red Planet and space agencies around the world hope that someday in the not too distant future, humans will join it. Mars is a popular destination for humans in sci-fi literature. Ray Bradbury’s  The Martian Chronicles , published a few years before the world’s first satelli...

On this episode of AirSpace we’re spotlighting the heroic service and enduring legacy of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. More than 1000 of these fearless women flew as civilians for the Army Air Forces during World War II. These skilled pilots performed jobs on the home front – ferrying planes, towing targets, transporting personnel – flying almost every type of military aircraft. Yet...