Viewpoints Radio
Award-winning reporting on current issues featuring America's leading experts.
External link for more info: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
We’ve barely just scratched the surface of space exploration. Many scientists at NASA and in the private sector have set their sights on the eventual human mission to Mars – but what lies past the red planet? Will humans one day be able to travel outside of our solar system? Physicist Dr. Daniel Whiteson joins us this week to explain the strange and beautiful intricacies of the cosmos.
The birth of the space shuttle in 1981 marked a new era of space travel. For the first time ever, NASA had a spacecraft that could launch into space and come back to earth and land like an airplane. While the shuttle had many successful flights, there were also some big catastrophes that ultimately led the program to cease operations in 2011. Former chief historian of NASA Roger Launius joins Viewpoints this week to tell the story of this era of American space history.
Dr. Emmanuel Urquieta, from the Center for Space Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, joins Viewpoints this week to help us understand some of the health impacts of spending time in space and the hurdles that come with longer missions like sending humans to Mars.
The Jupiter moon, Europa is 390 million miles away from Earth. In 2025, the NASA Europa Clipper mission launches and is estimated to arrive in Jupiter’s orbit by 2031. Why Europa? Underneath its radiated surface, the icy moon is believed to host a vast ocean similar to Earth’s that has ample conditions for complex life. Author David W. Brown joins Viewpoints this week to shed some light on the Jovian moon and some of the challenges that came with the lengthy approval of this deep space mission.
When we think back to the biggest space accomplishments in history, many of us instantly remember Apollo 11 – the mission that landed humans on the moon. However, we seldom talk about Apollo 8 when astronauts successfully orbited the moon. Author and historian, Jeffrey Kluger joins Viewpoints to discuss why Apollo 8 was a vital foundational mission for space travel and what it meant to the future of NASA.
Though Apollo 11 gets all the fame and Apollo 13 was made into a thrilling Ron Howard movie, author and historian Jeffrey Kluger says the Apollo 8 mission was a foundational trip for American space exploration. He takes us through the mission and examines what it meant for NASA moving forward.
We discuss the mission that effectively ended the space race and set an important precedent that may have saved the lives of the astronauts on board Apollo 13.
There’s a lot going on in the sky for the remainder of this year and our guests discuss the upcoming astronomical events and how you can watch them with the naked eye or with inexpensive binoculars and telescopes. We also discuss the importance and the fun of stargazing, where the best places are to watch the skies and how urban areas can change their lighting to make more heavenly bodies visible to their residents.
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