NASA celebrates twenty-five years of The Hubble Telescope and its groundbreaking glimpses into space and time. The Messenger spacecraft goes out with a bang, crashing –intentionally– into Mercury, after being the only spacecraft to ever orbit the planet. We’ll talk about these extraterrestrial milestones and more.
GUESTS:
- Mal Cameron - former astronomy and space educator at the McAuliffe Shepard Discovery Center and coordinator of its NASA Educator Resource Center
- John Gianforte – co-founder of the "Astronomical Society" of northern New England and astronomy instructor for Granite State College and UNH
Credit Jason Moon / NHPR
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The Guardian "Can Mars One colonise the red planet?"
Lansdorp insists that, even if a return trip were practical, he wouldn’t go for it. “It’s such a waste of money and effort! There’s a whole world to be built – there’s work for centuries on Mars. Why send people who want to go for a holiday, when there are 200,000 applicants who don’t need to go back? You can send 10 settlement missions for the cost of one return. If you go for that option, the first mission will always be 20 years away, as it’s been since the 1960s.
Seven Minutes of Terror: The Challenges of Getting to Mars
A Martian sunset courtesy of the Curiosity rover:
Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ.
The mysterious bright spots on Ceres:
