Weekly Space Hangout – Sept 25, 2015: Maggie Scholtz, Mars Rover Drill System Engineer

Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain)

Special Guests:
Maggie Scholtz (@martianmagster), who is a Mechanical Engineer working at JPL. She worked on the Curiosity Rover, primarily on the development of the drill and sampling system.

Guests:
Paul Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter / AskaSpaceman.com)
Morgan Rehnberg (cosmicchatter.org / @MorganRehnberg )
Dave Dickinson (@astroguyz / www.astroguyz.com)

This Week’s Stories:

Colliding Black Holes

The Fact and Fiction of Martian Dust Storms

Total Lunar Eclipse

Amazing Video of an Exoplanet in Motion

More Pluto, take 3: Can it get any better??

Rosetta reveals comet’s water-ice cycle

Boeing Rejects Aerojet-Rocketdyne Bid for ULA and Affirms Vulcan Rocket Support, Lockheed Martin Noncommittal

NASA Wants Hoverboard Company Arx Pax To Build A Tractor Beam

China Conducts Debut Launch of Long March 6

Astronomers Identify a New Mid-size Black Hole

Agreement Signed for MICADO Camera for E-ELT

Pairs of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies May Be Rarer Than Previously Thought

From flight crew to Flight: NASA names its first astronaut-turned-flight director

Remembering the Vela Incident

The Key to Colonizing Mars Could Be These Tiny Green Microbes

SLS manifest options aim for Phobos prior to 2039 Mars landing

ULA selects Orbital ATK’s GEM 63/63 XL SRBs for Atlas V and Vulcan boosters

Boeing identifies CST-100 prime landing sites

Rosetta reveals comet’s water-ice cycle

NIST Team Breaks Distance Record for Quantum Teleportation

Researchers: Hot, Dense Material Surrounds O-type Star with Largest Magnetic Field Known

Sagittarius A: Milky Way’s Black Hole Shows Signs of Increased Chatter

Too big for its boots: black hole is 30 times expected size

A new study suggests the universe was ‘cooked’ just right as it evolved.

Hubble Zooms in on Shrapnel from an Exploded Star

ESA team wins America’s Cup of rocket science

New ‘stealth dark matter’ theory may explain mystery of the universe’s missing mass

Perplexing Pluto: New ‘Snakeskin’ Image and More from New Horizons

Eleven year cosmic search leads to black hole rethink

Gigantic Ice Slab Found on Mars Just Below the Planet’s Surface

NASA Thrusters Propelled by New Green Propellants Complete Milestones

IceCube Collaboration Announces New Observations on Cosmic Neutrinos and Dark Matter

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Will Measure More Than 30 Million Galaxies and Quasars

Synchrotron Emission Will Allow Astronomers to Find Stars That No One Has Seen Before

Solar wind casts a reddish hue over rocky objects

Antihydrogen at CERN, 20 years and going strong

How to put neutrons into a twist: The orbital angular momentum of neutrons has been measured and controlled for the first time by researchers in Canada and the US.

NASA astronaut, five years after a bike accident cost him a ride into space, gets his chance

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Friday at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Google+, Universe Today, or the Universe Today YouTube page.

You can join in the discussion between episodes over at our Weekly Space Hangout Crew group in G+, and suggest your ideas for stories we can discuss each week!