#77 - November 2018 Part 2
Episode description
The Discussion: Jeni talking exoplanets and aliens at Cardiff Museum and we take a no spoiler look at the Neil Armstrong biopic, First Man.
The News: Rounding up the space and astronomy news this month we have:
- Commercial spaceflight update
- New Zealand’s Rocket Lab build a new launch site in the US
- The winners & losers in USAF’s launcher funding competition
- China’s Long March 5 rocket failure induces delays
- The death of the Kepler space telescope
- Russian Soyuz failures risk human access to space
- Hubble dead? Don’t believe the hype
- OSIRIS-Rex begins its final manoeuvres to land on an asteroid
Main news story: Europe and Japan’s Bepicolumbo mission to Mercury.
The Interview: Jeni interviews Bethan James, astronomer & astrophysicist currently working as an ESA/AURA Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) on the Hubble instrument team.
Q&A: Listeners’ questions via email, Facebook & Twitter take us on a journey into the astronomy issues that have always plagued our understanding or stretched our credulity. This month we take a look USAF’s rocket funding decision:
Why wasn’t SpaceX funded in the latest US military space funding round while Blue Origin was? Mark De Vrij, UK.