Season 5, Episode 32: Finale: Thanks for All the Gravity Assists
On the Gravity Assist podcast we have interviewed dozens of scientists, engineers, and others dedicated to the mission of NASA space explora...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & Podcasts
Religion & Spirituality
Gravity Assist
Dr. Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, takes you on a guided tour of the solar system and beyond.
Episodes
20 of 98 episodes
Season 5, Episode 31: Meet a Webb Scientist Who Looks Back in Time
The James Webb Space Telescope awed the world on July 12 with its first images and data. And it’s just getting started with its exploration...
Season 5, Ep. 30: Gravity Assist: How We Make Webb (and Hubble) Images
The world will get a first glimpse of the universe as never before when the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope come out on Jul...
Gravity Assist: It’s Raining Diamonds on These Planets
Uranus and Neptune are two of the many exciting and mysterious objects in our universe that the James Webb Space Telescope will soon begin t...
Season 5, Episode 28: This is What Mars Sounds Like, with Nina Lanza
With two microphones aboard the Perseverance rover, we can listen to Mars from its surface like never before. In addition to hearing how win...
Season 5, Episode 27: What Will We Eat on Mars?
Astronauts on the International Space Station have been conducting experiments to grow food, including peppers and radishes. Christina Johns...
Season 5, Episode 26: How to Grow Food on the Moon
Space botanists are working on strategies to grow crops on the lunar surface, as NASA makes strides toward sending astronauts to the Moon th...
Season 5,Episode 25: Walking on Broken Ice, with Catherine Walker
An ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica in March 2022, concerning scientists who track melting glaciers, sea level rise, and other effects...
Season 5, Episode 24: Do Other Planets Make Pollution?
On a quest to find out if we are not alone in the universe, Ravi Kopparapu at NASA Goddard studies how we could use telescopes to detect sig...
Season 5, Episode 23: These Space Rocks Have Seen It All
How do we know if a rock came from the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid? Planetary scientist Neyda Abreu has looked inside all kinds of meteorites...
Season 5, Episode 22: Using Webb to Trace Galactic Histories
The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched Dec. 25, will allow us to see the farthest galaxies and better understand the origins of the...
Season 5, Episode 21: In Case of Space Station Emergency
In space, we have to expect the unexpected. Sunny Panjwani of NASA’s Johnson Space Center shares how he got thrown into an emergency situati...
Gravity Assist: Meet NASA’s New Chief Scientist, Kate Calvin
Climate change is one of the most important issues facing our planet, and NASA has lots of space missions and programs in the works to monit...
Season 5, Episode 19: A New Set of X-Ray Eyes is Launching
NASA is about to launch a new spacecraft to look at the universe in X-ray light. The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, IXPE, will look at...
Season 5, Episode 18: How to Move an Asteroid, with Nancy Chabot
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Mission, or DART, will deliberately impact a small asteroid called Dimorphos to deflect its orbit ar...
Season 5, Episode 17: Solar Power for the Moon
As NASA prepares to send astronauts to the Moon through the Artemis program, engineers are working on technologies that will give these expl...
Season 5, Episode 16:Meet a Space Weather Scientist
Yaireska Collado-Vega leads a team at NASA’s Goddard Spacecraft Center that is studying the solar weather environment so that robots and peo...
Season 5, Episode 15: Lucy and the Space Fossils, with Hal Levison
To get a more complete understanding of the full history of our solar system, NASA is sending a spacecraft called Lucy to investigate the Tr...
Season 5, Episode 14: Goodbye Saturn, Hello Earth
Janelle Wellons likes to say that she operates “fancy space cameras.” At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she creates commands that allow s...
Season 5, Episode 13: Freaky Physics on the Space Station
The laws of physics get very, very weird in the realm of particles too small for the eye to see. Aboard the International Space Station, an...