Dr. Natalie Batalha

This week we talk with Dr. Natalie Batalha, co-investigator of NASA’s Kepler Team. Dr. Batalha talks to us about her love of science (especially physics), the Kepler mission, and the discovery of planet Kepler 10b.

Links:

• Dr. Natalie Batalha, co-investigator of the Kepler Team
• Dr. Natalie Batalha, San Jose State University
• Bay Area Native Takes Road Less Traveled to Kepler’s Space Mission (NASA.gov)
• Stars, Planets, Life and The Universe (web seminars from the NSTA Learning Center)
• NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers its First Rocky Planet
• Kepler 10b (from NASA.gov)
• Kepler Multimedia (from NASA.gov)
• NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft Discovers Extraordinary New Planetary System (NASA.gov)
• Kepler Finds a Mini Solar System (Bad Astronomy)
• New Found Cornucopia of Exoplanets More Than Doubles Cosmic Census (popsci.com)
• Six Ways to Find Another Earth (boingboing.net)
• Symphony of Science “We’re All Connected”
• Cats Playing Patty-Cake

Kepler Discovers its First Rocky Planet (from NASA Multimedia, narrated by Dr. Batalha)

Direct download: LOL58.mp3

Dr. Michelle Thaller

Our guest this week is Dr. Michelle Thaller.  A research scientist at the California Institute of Technology, Thaller is currently the Manager of the Education and Public Outreach program for the Spitzer Space Telescope.  Thaller talks to us about Spitzer, infrared light, and our origins in stellar corpses.

• Profile from Spitzer
  
• Profile from Cool Cosmos
• SIRTF Profile
• NASA Profile
• Entry in IMDB
• Wikipedia entry on Dr. Michelle Thaller

• Spitzer Space Telescope
  
• Video: Infrared: More than your Eyes can See
• Animation from NASA’s SpacePlace
  
• Post from Bad Astronomy
• Chandra X-Ray Telescope

I have always had a deep respect for people who can take complex ideas and make them seem profoundly simple and elegant. Instinctually, I’ve always felt that wisdom and eloquence are related. It’s not just what you say, but now effectively you communicate the inner workings of your mind to another human being.

-Dr. Michelle Thaller, from Spitzer Profile

Videos about our origins in stars:

• The Elements: Forged in Stars, from NOVA on Teachers Domain
• Cosmos: The Lives of The Stars (Carl Sagan) – Episode 1, season 9

Direct download: LOL29.mp3

Catch skeptic Phil Plait help the MythBusters battle those pesky moon landing “hoaxes” on Wednesday August 27th.

Steve Squyres

This week we talk with Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the science payload on the Mars Exploration Rover Project, & Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Preview from the show:

We have been so incredibly lucky with this mission. I mean, to have that dead wheel, which we thought was a catastrophe at the time, turn up one of the most exciting discoveries of the mission, was very good fortune.

The next big thing, at least in mars exploration, along with the continuing adventures of the rovers, is a mission called Phoenix. And Phoenix is a lander mission that’s going to land near the north polar region of mars, and is going to dig down into the soil there, hope to find ice and then, scoop up some of that ice, and put it into a little chemistry set on top of the lander, and find out what’s inside of that ice.

What we’ve tried to do is provide images, provide curriculum materials, and provide information for educators as we go. And I think that’s actually the best way to do it, because the thing that makes this exciting is not reading about it in the historical sense after the mission’s over, so much as being an active participant – you know following the mission as it’s going along. You can go to our website, and you can download the latest pictures from Mars that have come down in the last day or so.

Links:

• NASA’s Mars Exploration Page
• Audio clips with Dr. Steve Squyres, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
• Transcript: Mars Rover Update with Dr. Steve Squyres
• Steve Squyres on NASA Direct
• Steve Squyres entry from Wikipedia
• Steve Squyres: Man on a Misson from NOVA
• Steve Squyres Interview on The Colbert Report
• Steve Squyres on NPR’s Fresh Air from WHYY, March 29, 2004
• ABC News Person of the Week Article
• Father of Spirit and Opportunity, an article from Scientific American, October 2004
• Interview with Steve Squyres from The Cornell Daily Sun
• Mars Exploration Rovers Mission Update blog & Way Cool Scientist!
• UC Berkeley Distinguished Lecture in Astronomy Lecture with Steve Squyres on Google Video
• Roving Mars, written by Steve Squyres from amazon.com

Brian’s “Flaming Pumpkin of Death”
Dale’s Stop-motion video project

Direct download: nsta_lol3.mp3