Space Curious

Florida: Where some of the best stories in the country are born.  Based in Orlando, journalist Katrina Scales voices a selection of the day's top headlines, along with a nugget of Florida knowledge you may have never heard before.  Ready by 7:00 a.m. every weekday morning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SpaceX has been paid to launch four civilians into low-Earth orbit on a multi-day trip. Three of those passengers just learned they'd be going less than a year ago. The mission is called Inspiration4 and it's the first time regular people, not NASA astronauts, will make up the entirety of a space crew. To go into orbit and return home the crew will experience up to 6 G-forces, use a tiny spacecraft toilet for three days and essentially become a meteor crashing through the Earth's atmosphere on their way back down. Axios space reporter Miriam Kramer and Inspiration4 mission photographer John Kraus join Space Curious to talk about what sets this mission apart and how the ragtag crew was assembled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NASA is trying to land boots on the moon in the next three years but the current spacesuits American and European astronauts wear haven't been updated since 1978. And when it comes to moonwalking ... these old-school suits just won't do.  Moonwalkers of the Artemis generation are going to need some new gear and very soon if NASA plans to achieve its goal. In this episode of Space Curious, we'll hear from the experts developing the very first spacesuits designed for the lunar surface since the 1970s.  Retired NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, now with Collins Aerospace, and NASA engineer Kavya Manyapu, a spacewalk planning expert, help explain why a whole new spacesuit is needed and what we learned from the first time humans walked on the moon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Space Curious experts help explain what it means to go Interstellar, how do we define the vastness of space and who's making these decisions. This episode was inspired by David Mostardi, of Berkley, California, who wanted to know if the Voyager spacecraft didn't reach the Oort cloud did it really reach interstellar space? Alive Bowman, New Horizons missions operations manager and Stella Ocker, Cornell University planetary scientist, are this week's guests breaking down this fascinating topic. Original music from Rhein was used for this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Animal spaceflights paved the way for the first human astronauts and today creatures big and small continue to space travel advancing our knowledge of how the zero-gravity environment impacts all beings and aiding research down on Earth. Supercluster.com’s Astronaut Database is a compellation of every human and creature with a spaceflight experience. Chief creative officer Jamie Carreiro joins the show this week to talk about how Supercluster compiled all the non-human space travelers which includes hundreds of fruit flies, 40 dogs, 30 primates, seven bats and one cat. This episode was inspired by Maureen Coral, a listener who wanted to know what happened to a spider after its journey to the International Space Station. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Americans have not stepped foot on the moon in nearly 50 years but that’s going to change very soon. This week on Space Curious Astralytical founder Laura Forcyzk helps explain why the U.S. left the moon after the final Apollo mission and hasn't been back. Intuitive Machines co-founder Tim Crain also joins the show to talk about the company's robotic moon lander Nova-C launching to the moon with NASA science this fall. In the next decade private companies like Intuitive Machines will pave the way for NASA to return humans to the moon but this time the U.S. plans to stay with a sustainable presence. Forcyzk said during the Apollo-era no one could have predicted the commercial space boom fueling today's growing industry. Had NASA continued with a human presence on the moon for more than 50 years without commercial support it likely would not have been sustainable financially or politically. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The commercial space industry has completely changed the game for how NASA is planning to send astronauts back to the moon. It won’t even be NASA-owned landers to put boots on the moon when that does happen and the robotic missions ahead of humans are also commercial. NASA is just along for the ride. Two private American companies are launching moon landers later this year from Florida...kicking off a grand campaign to better understand our nearest neighbor. This week we’ll meet the first of two robots laying the groundwork for astronauts to return to the moon. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic will launch its Peregrine moon lander with ULA later this year.  Astrobotic CEO John Thornton joins Space Curious to explain how it plans to land its first robot on the moon and what it's carrying. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacqueline Cochran turns out to be the most fascinating woman you’ve never heard of. She was the lead the women's Air Force service pilots in World War II and the first woman to break the sound barrier and held more records than any pilot male or female the world over when she died in 1980. In this episode of Space Curious, "Fighting for Space" author and spaceflight historian Amy Shira-Teitel explains how Cochran and fellow pilot Jerri Cobb both wanted to see women become astronauts but went about it in two different ways. Though Jackie Cochran never made it to space her story is one of entrepreneurship and determination that led her to try to reach for the stars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mars has been the bell of the planetary ball in the last few decades but that’s not to say other planets in our solar system, like Venus haven't had a fair share of attention over the years.  NASA last sent a spacecraft to orbit the planet in 1990. Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, sent a whole slew of mostly successful missions to Venus, and Japan has an orbiter there now.  The tricky part is sending a robotic mission to the surface. Most have only survived for a few hours. So why send a robot to a planet that will destroy it? As we learned in the last episode of Space Curious, Venus eats spacecraft for lunch. It used to be -- in the US-- NASA was the only way to fund and send a spacecraft to another world but not anymore.  Commercial space companies are taking planetary science on, funding and planning their own missions in record time. In this episode we’ll find out how NASA makes the tough choices-- selecting which missions to send to other worlds and how Rocket Lab plans to be the first private company to go to Venus. Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, NASA Discovery Program lead scientist Thomas Wagner and Johns Hopkins planetary scientist Sarah Horst join Space Curious Host Emilee Speck to breakdown the process of sending a spacecraft to another world.

Earlier this year, Venus was in the spotlight because a group of international scientists said they found something peculiar in the Venusian clouds, the discovery would lead to new interest and excitement about potential robotic missions to Earth’s nearest neighbor. A study published in the journal Nature Astronomy reported a potential bio signature, or something that might indicate life is present, had been found in the clouds of Venus. The team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, said they had found a gas called phosphine in the clouds of Venus. It was a big deal because this particular kind of gas is thought to be made in only a few ways on rocky planets and those usually involve life. But then things got complicated. This week on WKMG and Graham Media's Space Curious podcast, National Geographic contributor Nadia Drake and Johns Hopkins University planetary scientist Dr. Sarah Horst help break down this complicated topic and what it takes to confirm great discoveries.

This year has been awful for a lot of reasons: a global pandemic, racial injustice, wildfires and the list goes on but an asteroid crashing into Earth will not be the cherry on top of humanity’s punishment. Simply put, we won’t be going out with a bang this year, 2020 rages on. In this week’s episode of WKMG’s podcast Space Curious planetary scientists help explain how we know where asteroids are and why we’re not all going to get squashed by one this year or anytime soon.

On this episode of Space Curious, we're talking about our fascination with astronauts, an elite class of humans who have trained years for spaceflight but they are also people with families, hobbies --and --bodily functions. This year marked the first-time astronauts have launched from Florida since 2011 when astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the Dragon spacecraft, made it to the space station -- and returned home, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. It was an epic return for American human space exploration. The astronauts -- affectionately known as “The Space Dads” -- answered a lot of questions about their journey, including about the Crew Dragon bathroom. To ask the question about why we want to know about the little oddities of space life, Space Curious host Emilee Speck spoke to space journalists Marina Koren, of The Atlantic, and Brendan Byrne, of WMFE, along with retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts. Virts offered his perspective of living in space, including some details you might not expect like giving his space station crew mate a haircut and the sounds he misses most from his spaceflights. While, Byrne and Koren both remind us that astronauts' families are also heroes of spaceflight.

Billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is getting closer with every launch to providing internet to the world-- including remote communities-- by using a fleet of thousands of satellites. BUT he’s not alone, Amazon, Samsung and other private companies plan to follow his lead. And that means low-Earth orbit is about to get even more crowded. In the latest episode of Space Curious, we’ll look at what massive constellations of satellites will mean for our view of the night sky, the research of astronomers who study it and what companies like SpaceX are doing to help mitigate these issues.

Humans have been launching spacecraft into low-Earth orbit and out into the universe for more than six decades.  Those spacecraft include satellites that provide GPS and weather forecasting down on Earth but they have limited lifespans. After a spacecraft is no longer serving a purpose it becomes junk. This week’s episodes answers the question: Who’s gonna take out all that space trash? To help explain the issues behind space debris Space Curious host Emilee Speck spoke to experts from the Florida Institute of Technology who know a lot about space junk and what challenges humans face in cleaning up the mess we make.

This year marks the 20th year humans have been living in space. That means most college students today have never known a day without an astronaut orbiting above them on the International Space Station. For the very first episode of WKMG-TV and Graham Media’s new podcast, Space Curious, we go back to the beginning and learn how the International Space Station came to be with someone who was there at the beginning: Kennedy Space Center Director and former astronaut Robert “Bob” Cabana. The first two pieces of the ISS were built across the world but connected in space. "You know, as a team, we need unity in anything that we do if we're going to be successful. So unity is a name for node one was outstanding," Cabana said. Every episode of Space Curious is inspired by a question from a listener. Submit questions at ClickOrlando.com/space. New episodes drop every other Wednesday.

Coming soon, a podcast from WKMG and Graham Media that answers your intergalactic questions.