Weekly Space Hangout Archives

March 7, 2018March 9, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout: March 7, 2018: Yoav Landsman and SpaceIL

Hosts:
Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)
Dr. Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter)
Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier )
Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org)

Special Guests:
Yoav Landsman is a System Engineer at the Israeli nonprofit organization, SpaceIL, which is trying to land the first Israeli spacecraft on the Moon as part of the Google Lunar XPrize competition. Previously, Yoav, a founding member of the WSH Crew, joined us to tell us about SpaceIL’s plans. Today, Yoav again joins us to provide an update on the status of their program.

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

February 28, 2018March 2, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout: Feb 28, 2018: Will Kalif’s “See It With A Small Telescope”

Special Guests:
Will Kalif is the author of the new amateur astronomy book titled See it With a Small Telescope.

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

February 21, 2018February 23, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout: Feb 21, 2018: Dr. Jessie Christiansen and “Exoplanet Explorers”

Special Guests:
Dr. Jessie Christiansen is a Caltech staff scientist and co-founder (with UC Santa Cruz astronomer Dr. Ian Crossfield) of the citizen-scientist project Exoplanet Explorers which examines data from the Kepler K2 mission.

In April, 2017, Exoplanet Explorers detected a 5-planet system with the potential for 6th planet as well. This system, named K2-138, is unique because it is the first multi-planet system to be discovered entirely by a group of citizen scientists. A paper titled The K2-138 System: A Near-resonant Chain of Five Sub-Neptune Planets Discovered by Citizen Scientists has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. You can access the published version of the article here: https://authors.library.caltech.edu/84280/1/Christiansen_2018_AJ_155_57.pdf

You can also learn more about Dr. Christiansen by visiting her webpage.

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

February 14, 2018February 16, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout: Feb 14, 2018: Joe Pappalardo’s “Spaceport Earth”

Special Guests:
Joe Pappalardo is the author of the new popular science and technology book, Spaceport Earth: The Reinvention of Spaceflight (The Overlook Press; Available Now). In it, Pappalardo “tackles the ever-changing, 21st-century space industry and what privately funded projects like Elon Musk’s SpaceX mean for the future of space travel.” (Foreign Policy)

Spaceport Earth takes readers on a tour of these high-stakes sites as Pappalardo examines how private companies are reshaping the way we use, intend to use, and view space travel, not solely for scientific exploration but for increasingly more general travel. Visiting every working spaceport in the United States and rocket launches around the world, Pappalardo presents a travelogue and modern history of spaceflight — where the industry is now and what’s on the horizon for explorers and consumers alike—in Spaceport Earth.

Learn more about Spaceport Earth, including where to buy it, here: http://www.overlookpress.com/categories/spaceport-earth-the-reinvention-of-spaceflight.html

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Chris Prophet, author of SpaceX From the Ground Up, joins us again to discuss with Fraser last week’s Falcon Heavy success.

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

February 7, 2018February 9, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Feb 7, 2018: Weekly News Roundup

Hosts:
Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier )
Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org)

Special Guest Hosts:
Dr. Pamela Gay (cosmoquest.org / @starstryder )
Dr. Nicole Gugliucci (@noisyastronomer)

While Fraser and Paul are in Iceland, Kimberly and Morgan hold down the fort, and have Pamela and Nicole join to discuss the major news of the week – like the SpaceX Falcon Heavy successful launch!

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

January 31, 2018February 2, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Jan 31, 2018: Andrzej Stewart of the Hi-SEAS IV Mars Simulation Mission

Special Guest:
Andrzej Stewart currently works in Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. However, from 2015-2016, Andrzej acted as the Chief Engineering Officer during the year-long Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (Hi-SEAS) IV Mars simulation mission on Mauna Loa. Prior to that he participated in NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) simulation where he acted as the flight engineer.

Aside from his mission-simulation participation, Andrzej has extensive design and engineering experience within the space program having worked on projects such as Spitzer, NASA’s Deep Space Network, and the Orion spacecraft.

You can read about Andrzej’s time “”on Mars”” and learn more about him by visiting his blog, Surfing with the Aliens.

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

January 23, 2018January 31, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Jan 24, 2018: Paul Hildebrandt’s “First to the Moon”

Special Guest:
Paul Hildebrandt (director of the film Fight for Space) joins us again to discuss his newest project, a documentary which is an historical piece about the mission of Apollo 8 and it’s crew, Borman, Anders, and Lovell. Titled First to the Moon, the film covers the biographies of each astronaut and goes on to tell the story of the Apollo 8 flight using new animations and newly found archival footage.

Announcements:
If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

January 17, 2018January 19, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Jan 17, 2018: Dr. Bram Venemans and Distant Quasars

Special Guest:
Dr. Venemans is a research staff scientist working at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany. His research topics include the discovery of black holes in the early Universe, the characterisation of the galaxies hosting these distant black holes, the Epoch of Reionisation and the galaxy environment of active galaxies.

Bram is a member of the team that recently discovered the most distant quasar currently known and its host galaxy. You can read about this discovery here: http://www.mpia.de/news/science/2017-14-distant-quasar

Announcements:

If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

January 10, 2018January 12, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Jan 10, 2018: Tim Dodd, Everyday Astronaut

Special Guest:
Tim Dodd created the Everyday Astronaut project in 2013 when he found himself the lone bidder of a Russian flight suit. Tim is a professional photographer and space and science communicator based out of Cedar Falls, Iowa. The majority of his career has been spent shooting weddings, taking him to 120 different weddings in 15 states and 3 countries. His most recent works are in the spaceflight realm, shooting rockets at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for www.SpaceFlightnow.com.

Announcements:

If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!

January 3, 2018January 5, 2018 by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Jan 3, 2018: Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey

Special Guest:
Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Rochester Institute of Technology, and is the Deputy Director of the Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics. She is also a leading member of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey team that has been selected as part of the James Webb Space Telescope Director’s Discretionary Early Release Science Program. It is one of 13 science teams that will use the $8 billion telescope first, conducting experiments during its initial cycle and testing the instruments’ capabilities.

Announcements:

If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Weekly Space Hangout YouTube page – Please subscribe!