Space Nuts Podcast

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MAVEN's Final Hour: Mars Orbiter Crisis + Historic ISS Evacuation Update & Lunar Timekeeping

NASA attempts to contact the silent MAVEN Mars orbiter after 40 days—but prospects look grim. Plus: the first-ever ISS medical evacuation su

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A US-Russian space crew lands safely in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint on the ISS

A US-Russian space crew lands safely in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint on the ISS

A U.S.-Russian space crew landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sunday after an eight-month stint on the International Space Station

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NASA’s ESCAPADE Snaps Family Portrait of Earth, Moon

NASA’s ESCAPADE Snaps Family Portrait of Earth, Moon

On July 3, 2026, NASA’s Mars-destined ESCAPADE spacecraft captured photos of Earth and the Moon in visible and thermal infrared light.

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Q: What do the “jetpacks” in Northrop Grumman’s MRV-MEP mission actually do?

A: The Mission Extension Pods attach to ageing satellites in geostationary orbit to supply fresh propulsion, extending each satellite’s working life by roughly six years.

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Super Heavy-Starship rocket chalks up mostly successful test flight – Spaceflight Now

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Wildfire forces evacuation of NASA's Deep Space Network complex in Spain

Wildfire forces evacuation of NASA's Deep Space Network complex in Spain

Any potential damage will be assessed when it is safe to do so."

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Q: What made Starship Flight 13’s ocean splashdown a first?

A: It was the softest splashdown SpaceX had ever achieved with a Starship — and for the first time the Ship tipped over onto the water without exploding, continuing to send back telemetry and video while it floated.

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New Images Reveal the Stunning Properties of the Black Hole at the Center of M87

New Images Reveal the Stunning Properties of the Black Hole at the Center of M87

Researchers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with international collaborators, carried out the first spatially resolved dual-frequency spectral study of the M87 black hole using observations obtained in 2018 with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA).

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SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes the 'softest splashdown' ever after launching next-gen Starlink satellites in Flight 13 test (video)

SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes the 'softest splashdown' ever after launching next-gen Starlink satellites in Flight 13 test (video)

SpaceX launched Starship, the world's most powerful rocket, on a critical 13th test flight on July 24, a stunning test flight that notched big success and ended with a huge surprise.

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Meet NASA's New X-59 Test Pilot  - NASA

Meet NASA's New X-59 Test Pilot  - NASA

NASA added a new X-59 test pilot to support the agency’s Quesst mission: Mike Lippert, a research test

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Q: Why is 12 August 2026 a date for the diary?

A: It’s a double feature: a total solar eclipse (path across Greenland, Iceland and Spain) on the same day the Perseid meteor shower peaks — and this year the Perseids peak on a new Moon, meaning ideal dark skies.

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NASA astronaut, 2 cosmonauts returning to Earth on July 26: Watch it live

NASA astronaut, 2 cosmonauts returning to Earth on July 26: Watch it live

The trio's Soyuz spacecraft will undock from the ISS at 3:02 a.m. ET on Sunday (July 26) and land on Earth about 3.5 hours later.

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The Evolution of Astronaut Food

The Evolution of Astronaut Food

Everyone knows that traveling into space raises a lot of difficult issues, for example: How do you feed a human in zero gravity? Crumbs can damage equipment, liquids float away, and every meal has to survive launch while providing enough nutrition to keep astronauts alive millions of miles from Eart

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How massive does an object need to be before it can fuse deuterium in its core?

About 13 to 15 times the mass of Jupiter. That threshold is the usual dividing line between a very large planet and a brown dwarf. To fuse ordinary hydrogen — to be a real star — you need roughly 90 Jupiter masses.

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1/ Astronomers have confirmed the first “exo-satellite” — a Jupiter-mass object orbiting a brown dwarf, which itself orbits a red dwarf 70 light-years away. Published in Nature. The problem: nobody agrees whether it is a moon or a planet.

2/ The brown dwarf is 29–38 Jupiter masses. Above ~13 it fuses deuterium; below ~90 it cannot fuse hydrogen. So it is neither star nor planet — which makes the thing orbiting it neither moon nor planet. The IAU has a problem.

3/ Also today: the Milky Way’s most powerful particle accelerator confirmed near Altair on the sky (though ~14,000 ly away). Protons above 1 PeV — 100× beyond the LHC. Fermi + Nobeyama + Chandra data settled it.

4/ And Chandra has caught a black hole starving a galaxy it does not live in — a jet from a neighbouring galaxy stirring the Red Potato’s gas so hard it cannot form stars. Full episode: astronomydaily.io

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What does the name Antares mean, and why?

It comes from the Greek for “rival of Ares” — rival of Mars. Antares is a red supergiant with a distinctly orange-red colour, and ancient observers noticed it looked uncannily like the red planet when the two were near each other in the sky.

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The Red Potato Galaxy and its Stifling Neighbour

The Red Potato Galaxy and its Stifling Neighbour

Galaxies attract cold gas from the intergalactic medium and turn it into stars. But the JWST has found galaxies that aren't forming stars in the early Universe, long before they should've become quiescent. In at least one instance involving the Red Potato Galaxy, an AGN jet from a neighbouring galaxy is the likely culprit.