Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

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World Space Week and farewell to Swift Sep 02, 2026

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Dennis Stone, president and co-founder of the World Space Week Association, takes us behind the scenes of the largest annual space event on Earth. From its origins as a volunteer effort in Houston to a UN-declared celebration reaching 50,000 events in over 100 countries, Dennis shares how World Space Week inspires the next generation, and how you can get involved this Oct. 4 through 10. Then, Science Editor Asa Stahl breaks down the end of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, the 21-year-old space telescope that's falling out of orbit after a bold rescue mission fell short. Plus, Chief Scientist Bruce Betts looks back at a milestone centennial in this week's What's Up, 100 years since Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-world-space-week-and-swift

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The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is ready to launch Aug 26, 2026

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After decades of development, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is preparing to launch. Once in orbit, Roman will conduct the widest surveys of the universe ever attempted, probing the nature of dark energy, discovering thousands of new exoplanets, and capturing images of billions of galaxies. In this episode, we sit down with Julie McEnery, senior project scientist for Roman at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jason Rhodes, project scientist for Roman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to explore what the telescope will reveal and how scientists around the world will be able to access and work with its data. Plus, in What's Up, we look at Roman's coronagraph and what it will take for the Habitable Worlds Observatory to push that technology far enough to image Earth-like worlds around Sun-like stars.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-nancy-grace-roman

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Book Club Edition: Becoming Martian by Scott Solomon Aug 21, 2026

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Will we change or terraform Mars to better suit humans? Or are we more likely to change ourselves to better fit the red planet? How far can evolution take us in these new and exotic environments? These and many other fascinating questions are at the heart of Rice University professor Scott Solomon’s great book, “Becoming Martian”. He joins host Mat Kaplan for a far-ranging conversation in this month’s installment of Planetary Radio’s book club edition.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-scott-solomon

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The SpaceX Falcon 9 that crashed into the Moon Aug 19, 2026

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage slammed into the moon on August 5 after spending over a year and a half drifting through the Earth-Moon system. Jared Head, museum facilitator at Columbia Memorial Space Center, producer at TMRO, and co-host of All Space Considered at Griffith Observatory, walks us through how a rocket launched in January 2025 ended up crashing into the lunar surface. Kate Howells, the Planetary Society's public education specialist, shares her experience witnessing Europe's first total solar eclipse in 27 years from a canyon in Spain on her honeymoon. Plus, Jack Kiraly, the Planetary Society's chief of advocacy, gives us an update on the campaign to save NASA science and the proposed changes to OMB's federal grant-making rules. We close with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist, who joins for What's Up, to discuss Point Nemo, the spacecraft graveyard in the South Pacific.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-falcon-9-moon-crash

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Total solar eclipse 2026: Astrophotography and birdsong Aug 12, 2026

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On August 12th, 2026, the Moon’s shadow will sweep across Iceland, Greenland, and Spain, bringing the first total solar eclipse visible from Europe since 1999. And because this eclipse happens near sunset, it promises to be one of the most visually stunning in living memory.

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, founder of Cosmic Background Photography, joins the show to talk about his extraordinary 2024 eclipse image, his collaboration with the Artemis II crew to capture the Moon in unprecedented detail, and what he's planning for this unique low-horizon eclipse. Then, bioacoustics researcher David Mann, founder of Haikubox and Loggerhead Instruments, shares the results of the Eclipse Echoes study, which used a network of hundreds of AI-powered bird monitors to reveal how birds across North America responded to the 2024 eclipse. The answer is far more complicated than simply going quiet.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-total-solar-eclipse

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Space Policy Edition: “Science: A New Golden Age” - Reimagining U.S. science policy Aug 07, 2026

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The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy recently released "Science: A New Golden Age", a sweeping report that calls for a fundamental reimagining of how the United States funds and conducts science. Explicitly modeled on Vannevar Bush's landmark 1945 report "Science, the Endless Frontier," it challenges the traditional linear model of innovation, advocates for empowering individual scientists over institutions, proposes faster grants with less bureaucracy, and envisions a greater role for AI in the scientific process. But this ambitious vision arrives in a deeply contradictory context: the same administration has proposed slashing science agency budgets, cutting new NSF funding awards by over 50%, and imposing new bureaucratic controls on scientific grants.

Casey Dreier is joined by Zach Pirtle, deputy director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, and the Planetary Society's Chief of Advocacy Jack Kiraly to unpack the report's proposals, tensions, and implications.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/space-policy-edition-science-a-new-golden-age

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LHS 1140b: The first atmosphere detected on a rocky habitable-zone exoplanet Aug 05, 2026

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For the first time, scientists have confirmed an atmosphere on a rocky exoplanet in the habitable zone of another star. Sarah Al-Ahmed is joined by Collin Cherubim, NASA Hubble Fellow at the University of Chicago, to discuss his team's detection of helium escaping from the super-Earth LHS 1140b, and what it reveals about how rocky worlds build, transform, and lose their atmospheres over time. His team's paper, published in the journal Science, marks a milestone decades in the making. Then Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, joins for What's Up, where we dig into the very first exoplanet atmosphere ever detected and its surprising connection to this week's guest.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-lhs-1140b

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TERP RAPTOR: A student-built mission to asteroid Apophis Jul 29, 2026

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On Friday, April 13, 2029, asteroid Apophis will pass closer to Earth than our geostationary satellites. While NASA, ESA, and JAXA are all sending missions, a team of students at the University of Maryland is building their own spacecraft to join the fleet. TERP RAPTOR is a CubeSat-based mission roughly the size of a microwave that aims to fly past the asteroid and snap images of its surface as it approaches Earth. Four members of the team join Planetary Radio: Adrienne Rudolph, the Student Principal Investigator; Elena Wu, the Lead Project Manager; Tyler Autrey, the Mechanical, Structure, and Materials Lead; and Alexander Williams, the Propulsion Lead. Together, they talk about how a graduate class project turned into a real mission, what they hope to learn about this potentially hazardous asteroid, and why they're not letting anyone tell them it can't be done.

Then, Bruce Betts joins us for What's Up, where we mark the deployment anniversary of The Planetary Society's own CubeSat-based solar sail mission, LightSail 2.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-terp-raptor

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Hot Jupiters: The ‘Roasted Planet’ and the wrong-way hotspot Jul 22, 2026

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Two hot Jupiters presented at the 248th American Astronomical Society meeting push our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres to the extreme. Research Scientist Tiffany Kataria from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shares new JWST observations of HD80606 b, the "Roasted Planet,”a gas giant on one of the most eccentric orbits ever discovered. Assistant Professor Lisa Dang of the University of Waterloo joins to discuss CoRoT-2 b, a young, inflated hot Jupiter whose hottest point shows up in an unexpected location on the exoplanet, possibly because the planet hasn't fully tidally locked with its star yet. Then Chief Scientist Bruce Betts joins for What's Up to explore atmospheric super-rotation, winds that outrun the worlds they ride on.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-hot-jupiters

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Book Club Edition: “The Edge of Space-Time” by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Jul 17, 2026

Show notes

It may be the best book subtitle we’ve encountered in the Planetary Society book club: “Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie.” Theoretical physicist and black feminist science theorist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has followed her acclaimed first book, “The Disordered Cosmos,” with this new, equally celebrated, deeply personal romp across the Universe, “The Edge of Space-Time”. Swinging from quantum mechanics to hip-hop, and from galaxies to Alice in Wonderland, she guides us through the looking glass to what we know and would love to know about the Universe. It all but guaranteed a mind-bending conversation with host Mat Kaplan that begins with Chanda’s concern for the state of scientific research in the United States, and ends among the stars.

Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-chandra-prescod-weinstein

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