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Not for profit podcast. Astronomy, Deep Space Exploration and International Collaboration

Episode 99: Professor Stamatios Krimigis – Exploring the Solar System with Voyager

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This episode was recorded in Athens in July 2022 during Cospar 2022 and he speaks about his remarkable career guided in large part by his mentor, physicist James Van Allen.

Professor Stamtios Krimigis

He started studying physics at the University of Minnesota in the same month that Sputnik was launched. A chance meeting with James van Allen led Stamatios Krimigis to build instruments for Mariner 3 and 4. Eventually assigned as the Principle Investigator for the charged particle instrument on the voyager program which was initially known as Mariner Jupiter Saturn 77 program.

It is released today to mark his 84th birthday tomorrow on September 10th. Audio and youtube video below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:42 — 46.6MB) | Embed

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Episode 93: Exploring the surface of Titan

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Prof. John Zarnecki

In the early hours of Christmas Day 2004, a small probe called Huygens separated from the larger spacecraft Cassini. Three weeks later, on 14 January, it descended through Titan’s atmosphere to make the most distant soft landing in the solar system to date. Huygens transmitted data during its 136 minute descent through the thick atmosphere and a further 130m minutes from the surface until Cassini disappeared below the horizon.

Prof. John Zarnecki was the principal investigator for the UK-based team that built the instruments that first made contact with the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest Moon.

In this conversation, recorded in December 2020, Prof. Zarnecki recalls how the mission came about, the science Huygens revealed at the time and today, a decade and a half later. Cassini-Huygens was a joint mission between NASA and ESA. He also shares his views on the value of international collaboration in space.

A video of this interview is available on YouTube.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:42 — 48.4MB) | Embed

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Episode 92: Revisiting Panspermia with Prof. Wickramasinghe

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Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe

The idea of Panspermia, that life exists throughout the universe and spreads via asteroids, comets and cosmic dust, has been around for a long time. Two of the strongest advocates were Professor Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe. 

In this episode I spoke at length with Professor Wickramasinghe about his long and distinguished career championing the idea of panspermia the covering the topics:

  • Initial difficulties in establishing Panspermia as a legitimate and respectable topic for scientific study.
  • Professor Wickramasinghe’s journey in 1960 form Cylon (as it was known at the time) to Cambridge as Hoyle’s Phd student.
  • His personal recollections of Fred Hoyle (initially his Phd supervisor and later collaborator) and Arthur C Clarke, who had made Cylon his home in the late 1950s.
  • His views on how the research on Panspermia has developed and where it stands today

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:15:03 — 60.1MB) | Embed

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  • Prof. Fred Hoyle 1962
  • Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe 1978
  • Fred Hoyle and Wickramasinghe 1980
  • Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe 2001
  • Home-made telescope late 1950s
Pictures curtesy of Prof. Wickramasinghe

Episode 69: Mars Orbiter Mission

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Dr Mylswamy Annadurai is the program director for the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) launched in 2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation. He served as the program director for the 2008  Chandrayaan-I mission to the Moon and is continuing that role for the Chandrayaan-2, currently in development.

ISROThis interview was recorded in his office at the ISRO’s Satellite Centre in Bangalore on 26th March 2014, after MOM had been launched but before it had arrived at Mars.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:48 — 14.5MB) | Embed

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