The Space Show

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...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 2 August 2023: Space Show News: Russia is returning to the Moon with Lunar-25. After years of delays, Russia’s Luna-25 lander is scheduled to launch to the Moon aboard a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket on 11 August 2023. The uncrewed mission will be the first Russian spacecraft to land on the Moon in more than 45 years. Planet Earth — Episode 55: Acadia Plant efficiency decl...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 26 July 2023: Australia’s Moon to Mars Initiative 2020—2026 The following 10 projects will share in close to $40 million under the Demonstrator Mission Grants program of the Moon to Mars initiative: $6.2M to the Australian National University to develop Laser Technology for the next GRACE mission $5.2M to Advanced Navigation Pty. Ltd. for Project LUNA – Navigation...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 19 July 2023: Chandrayaan 3 launched to the Moon: The mission plan for India's Chandrayaan 3 lunar orbiter, lander and rover , followed by launch commentary from the launch site. Also, a report from Australia that the venting of the spent upper stage of the launch vehicle was seen. (Audio inserts courtesy ISRO, Ch9) James Webb Space Telescope: A discussion on t...

This episode of The Space Show podcast, is dedicated to the memory of former Space Association of Australia president and long-time contributor to the programme, Peter Aylward, who passed away in Melbourne last week after a valiant battle with cancer. He was 65. On The Space Show for Wednesday, 5 July 2023: Euclid: Exploring the dark universe The purpose of the European Space Agency's Euclid m...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 28 June 2023: Planet Earth: Season 4 — Episode 54 Gamba grass and WorldView 3 United Kingdom Space Agency - UK/Australia Space Bridge New Zealand and Australian fire mapping COVID and South-East Asian smoke Thomas Pesque (ESA Astronaut) and climate research from the International Space Station Canada's WildFireSat Crop monitoring during COVID 19 ERS 1 - Europea...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 21 June 2023: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) extended mission phase Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and the Hera mission follow-up Sixty Years of Women in Space: Marking the 60th anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova's Vostok 6 flight and the 40th anniversary of Sally Ride's STS-6 mission, a celebration of several female astronauts. Also, "Wo...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 14 June 2023: Australian Defence Science and Technology Roadmap A presentation by Andrew Seedhouse, Chief, National Security and Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Division, at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation about the Defence Science and Technology Roadmap. Themes include: accessing space; satellite technologies; assurance of access to sp...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 7 June 2023: In Praise of Mystery: A poem for Europa Ada Limón, 24th Poet Laureate of The United States , in conversation with Dr Carla Haden, Librarian of Congress, Washington D.C. A conversation about, and the reading of a poem to be inscribed aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft that will be sent to Jupiter. Also details of Message in a Bottle⁠ and how yo...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 31 May 2023: Space Show News As this episode of The Space Show was broadcast live to air, there were a record 17 people orbiting the Earth, from five countries . The previous record, set during the privately funded  Inspiration4  mission in September 2021, was 14 people. The record count was comprised of the following four seperate crews: Shenzhou 16  (three people...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 24 May 2023: Marking the 50th anniversary of Skylab: America’s first space station The Skylab 2 mission was one of the great 'saves' of the space age. The story is told in mission audio and the words of astronaut Joe Kerwin recorded in conversation with the Space Association of Australia. (Mission audio inserts courtesy JSC)

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 17 May 2023: Katherine Bennell-Pegg , Director, Space Technology at the Australian Space Agency and now also Australia’s first astronaut candidate in training with the European Space Agency , presents the 2022 Warren Centre Innovation Lecture at the Faculty of Engineering , University of Sydney . Katherine is introduced by Professor Ben Thornber, School of Aerospac...

On The Space Show for Wednesday, 10 May 2023: Space Show News: The Federal Budget has made some cuts to the funding allocations for the Australian Space Agency and the national space industry. Planet Earth: Season 4 - Episode 52 The TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) satellites launched from New Zealand after a dela...