Episode 95 European Space Cooperation DeGaulle to ExoMars with Brian Harvey

Following the successful landing of @isro #Chandrayaan-3, Associate Project Director Kalpana Kalahasti was the first female to speak at the ISRO live stream event. As a seasoned engineer, Kalahasti contributed to numerous projects including SARAL in 2013. Here she talks about her journey with ISRO which began in 1999 as a radar engineer.

The 100 year starship project @100YSS aims to get humanity to develop the capability to travel to the stars in one hundred years time. It started in 2012 headed by Dr Mae Jemison the first woman of colour to fly in to space in STS 47 in 1992.

I first came across the Antikythera Mechanism just over a decade ago. It is still the most incredible artefact from history. It is as out of place in our time as William Shakespeare using an Iphone or Vasco De Gama travelling in a speedboat. The Antikythera Mechanism is a complex mechanical (clockwork) device that can determine the position of the planets and phases of the Moon and predict when solar and lunar eclipses will occur. Constructed about two thousand years ago, it was discovered in 1901.

The Clarke Exobelt is the name that Dr Hector Socas-Navarro has given to perhaps the largest structure humans have built. A collection of satellites in earth orbit (geosynchronous) 36,000 km radius. All circling the earth at the same speed in the same direction. The density of this orbit has been increasing since the 1960s but is not yet sufficiently dense for detection from interstellar distances. But in 200 years it may be. In the meantime, this concept works the other way around too. SETI researchers can search for these megastructures or Tecno Signatures to look for extraterrestrial intelligence

The Clarke Exobelt is the name that Dr Hector Socas-Navarro has given to perhaps the largest structure humans have built. A collection of satellites in earth orbit (geosynchronous) 36,000 km radius. All circling the earth at the same speed in the same direction. The density of this orbit has been increasing since the 1960s but is not yet sufficiently dense for detection from interstellar distances. But in 200 years it may be. In the meantime, this concept works the other way around too. SETI researchers can search for these megastructures or Tecno Signatures to look for extraterrestrial intelligence

European Space Agency's Dr Paul McNamara was studying low-frequency gravitational waves just before they were discovered in 2015. Now he is the astronomy and astrophysics coordinator for the European Space Agency. In this interview, recorded in Athens during Cospar2022, he speaks about some of the exciting science missions that ESA will be launching later this decade.

Dr Ralph Lorenz speaks about Dragonfly, a return mission to land on Titan. This mission, for which he is the mission architect, is like no other. It is not really a lander or rover but a quadcopter that will sample different regions near the landing site during its 3.3-year lifetime.

When it comes to the pioneers of rocketry, tradition has it that it was Tsiolkovsky, Goddard and Oberth. in this episode, author Rob Godwin talks about William Leitch from Scotland. He was writing about rocketry from the 1850s

Astronomer Dr Connor Nixon @shamrocketeer speaks about the @nasawebb program to observe solar system objects using the #JWST led by @hbhammel

In 1972, Harrison Schmitt became the first (and so far only), scientist to walk on the surface of the Moon. Since then many scientists have brought their scientific insights to understanding to the solar system and their moons. geologist @sanjeevgupta45 from @imperialcollege talks about Mars