Tag: #earth-observation — 25 segments on Living on Earth
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April 17, 2026:
Artemis II Science and Awe
The four astronauts of the Artemis II mission that safely splashed down on April 10 were able to test out Orion spacecraft systems during their journey, a crucial step towards NASA’s ultimate goal of establishing a continuous human presence on the moon and embarking on future missions to Mars and beyond. They also made new scientific observations that are helping to expand our knowledge of the Moon, as well as the Earth itself. Artemis II Lunar Science Lead Kelsey Young talks with Host Aynsley O’Neill about the scientific goals and accomplishments of the mission and the unforgettable moments the crew shared with people back on Earth.
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April 03, 2026:
Colonizing the Moon
The astronauts of the Artemis II mission are prospecting for a planned base on the moon, the first lunar expedition since 1972. The crew includes the first woman, the first person of color, and first Canadian to travel to the Moon. John Daniel "Danny" Olivas, an engineer and retired NASA astronaut, speaks with Host Aynsley O’Neill about the mission objectives and challenges, why it faced delays and what sets the Artemis program apart from the Apollo visits to the moon of more than 50 years ago.
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March 27, 2026:
A Woolly Rhino DNA Discovery
A recent discovery is giving us insights into the last days of the woolly rhinoceros in Siberia before it went extinct some 14,000 years ago. Researchers studied the DNA of a well-preserved piece of woolly rhino meat that was the last meal of a wolf pup. Study coauthor Camilo Chacón-Duque, a bioinformatician at Uppsala Universitet, speaks with Host Jenni Doering.
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January 02, 2026:
A City on Mars and the Perils of Settling Space
As a new space race heats up, private companies and sovereign nations alike have their sights on setting up permanent human settlements in space – but huge technological, medical and legal challenges remain. Biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith are a married couple who teamed up to write the 2023 book A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? They join Host Jenni Doering to chat about the comically hostile environments beyond our home planet.
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September 26, 2025:
An Extraordinary New Telescope
The new Vera C. Rubin observatory telescope in Chile features the largest camera ever built, at about the size of a small car, and will soon begin photographing the entire southern sky repeatedly for a full decade. Clare Higgs, an astronomer on the Rubin Education and Public Outreach team, joins Host Aynsley O’Neill to share how this new telescope can help advance our understanding of dark matter, reveal hard-to find interstellar objects, and much more.
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November 29, 2024:
Star Sounds
NASA turned infrared, optical, and x-ray data from space into sound in a process called “sonification,” so we can “hear” the gorgeous spiral galaxy known as the Phantom Galaxy. And within our own Milky Way galaxy is the Jellyfish Nebula, the remnant of an exploded star. Host Aynsley O’Neill walks us through these otherworldly sounds.
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October 18, 2024:
Europa Clipper On Its Way
The Europa Clipper spacecraft recently blasted off into space to start a six-year journey towards Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. On a series of close flybys, Clipper is designed to gather data that could indicate whether Europa might harbor life in the enormous liquid water ocean it appears to have beneath its icy shell.
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August 09, 2024:
A Mars Testing Ground
Since 2001 the Mars Society has run around 300 simulated missions at a remote site in the high desert of Utah, to study the effect of extra-vehicular activity or EVA on the human body and mimic field research people might run on Mars one day, such as looking for fossilized life. Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin joins Host Aynsley O’Neill to describe the research station, what a day in the life of a participant looks like and says why he believes we should send humans to Mars.
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August 09, 2024:
Night
The vastness of space can provoke fear but the perspective it brings can also bring inspiration and even comfort. Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender recounts the impact on his consciousness of a star-studded sky, planets in full view, and shooting stars.
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July 05, 2024:
A Vivid New View of Earth
A powerful new NASA satellite called PACE can look at the ocean and clouds to distinguish between different kinds of microscopic phytoplankton and aerosols from an orbit 400 miles up. PACE Project Scientist Dr. Jeremy Werdell joins Host Jenni Doering to describe how the technology works, its value to scientific research on climate change, and the real-time data it provides about water and air quality worldwide.
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July 05, 2024:
Starborn: How the Stars Made Us
Stargazing has profoundly shaped who we are as human beings, and gave rise to science, religion, and origin stories from diverse traditions. Roberto Trotta, a cosmologist at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, explores this legacy in his book Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (And Who We Would Be Without Them). He joins Host Jenni Doering to discuss how studying the night sky shaped science and more and why satellites now threaten our connection to the stars.
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April 19, 2024:
A Living Earth Called “Gaia”
Next, Host Steve Curwood and the Living on Earth team explore Earth as a complex and self-sustaining organism called Gaia. Over billions of years life has interacted with the air, water and rocks of this planet to keep life in the sweet spots for temperature and resource supplies. With the help of scientists, deep ecologists, children, an astronaut and more, we explore our place on this living planet.
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March 29, 2024:
Black Hole Breakthrough
An international team of astronomers recently reported the discovery of a 13 billion-year-old black hole, to date the oldest ever observed, thanks to the powerful James Webb Space Telescope. Lead author Dr. Roberto Maiolino joins Host Jenni Doering to explore new questions about how these mysterious, extremely dense objects form and grow.
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March 29, 2024:
Star Sounds
NASA turned infrared, optical, and x-ray data from space into sound in a process called “sonification,” so we can “hear” the gorgeous spiral galaxy known as the Phantom Galaxy. And within our own Milky Way galaxy is the Jellyfish Nebula, the remnant of an exploded star. Host Aynsley O’Neill walks us through these otherworldly sounds.
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March 15, 2024:
A Mars Testing Ground
Since 2001 the Mars Society has run over 270 simulated missions at a remote site in the high desert of Utah, to study the effect of extra-vehicular activity or EVA on the human body and mimic field research people might run on Mars one day, such as looking for fossilized life. Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin joins Host Aynsley O’Neill to describe the research station, what a day in the life of a participant looks like and says why he believes we should send humans to Mars.
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March 15, 2024:
Life on Europa?
Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most promising places to look for extraterrestrial life. Europa has a large liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, so NASA plans to launch the Clipper space probe later this year to investigate. As part of the mission NASA is sending a poem to space. US Poet Laureate Ada Limón reads aloud her poem, “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.”
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March 15, 2024:
Solar Eclipse Magic
On April 8th millions across North America will have the opportunity to experience a total solar eclipse, when the moon briefly blocks out the sun. Cosmologist Roberto Trotta is the author of “Starborn: How the Stars Made Us (And Who We Would Be Without Them)" and joins Host Jenni Doering to describe how our ancestors reacted to this strange, otherworldly phenomenon and how you too can safely witness it.
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February 23, 2024:
One Step Further: The Story of Katherine Johnson
The 2021 children’s book One Step Further: My Story of Math, the Moon, and a Lifelong Mission tells the story of Katherine Johnson, an African American woman who while living under Jim Crow in the south worked at NASA as a mathematician and helped put a man on the moon. Host Steve Curwood spoke with one of Katherine’s three daughters, Katherine Moore, who co-authored One Step Further to help share her mother's story.
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November 10, 2023:
A New Dinosaur
A dinosaur fossil discovered in Egypt in the 70s gathered dust in museums for decades and now it finally has a name as a new species, Igai semkhu. Paleontologist Dr. Eric Gorscak spoke with Host Aynsley O’Neill about why fossils from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs about 75 million years ago are relatively rare in Africa and what this “titanosaur” specimen can reveal about the distant past.
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November 10, 2023:
Sea Level Risk From Antarctica
Antarctica’s ice shelves block glaciers from flowing into the sea but a recent study found that these ice shelves lost 8.3 trillion tons of ice in the last 25 years and are at risk releasing more glacier ice into the ocean. Richard Alley is a professor of Geosciences at Penn State University and joined Host Steve Curwood to shed light on what all this could mean for sea level rise and future ice loss in Antarctica.
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October 06, 2023:
Rocks from Another (Little) World
The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx has successfully delivered a sample from the asteroid Bennu to Earth. Scientists like Dr. Vicky Hamilton, a planetary geologist and co-investigator on the OSIRIS-REx mission, are eager to study the rocky material and see if it can unveil anything about the origins of our solar system. Dr. Hamilton joins Host Aynsley O’Neill to share surprising findings from the mission.
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June 09, 2023:
Deep-Sea Volcano Helps Forecast Eruptions
Three Sisters and Mounts Hood, Rainier, St. Helens and Shasta are all active volcanoes that put many people in the Pacific Northwest at risk. But only one has erupted in our lifetimes. Jes Burns of Oregon Public Broadcasting reports that a remote deep-sea volcano off the coast of the West Coast erupts far more often and is helping scientists understand when an eruption might occur closer to home.
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May 26, 2023:
Note on Emerging Science: How Lizards Can Breathe Underwater
Some anole lizards can stay underwater for up to 20 minutes to evade predators, and now researchers have discovered their secret. Living on Earth’s Don Lyman reports that these lizards use a bubble of air around their snouts and rebreathe the bubble in and out.
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March 24, 2023:
Mapping the Seafloor to Predict Coastal Flooding
The topography of the coastal seafloor has a lot to do with how much flooding coastal areas will experience during hurricanes. As reporter David Levin reports, a team of scientists is working on a new technology to create more accurate seafloor maps in the Gulf of Mexico.
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March 10, 2023:
New Exoplanet Revealed
NASA scientists used data from the James Webb Space Telescope to identify exoplanet LHS 475 b. Exoplanets are planets outside of our solar system that orbit a different star, and can be very difficult to identify. Living on Earth’s Aynsley O’Neill spoke with one of the lead researchers on the project, exoplanet astronomer Kevin Stevenson, about how the finding may help develop a model for identifying planets that are likely to contain life.
