AWESOME ASTRONOMY Paul & Dr Jeni

This month excitement builds for the predicted Nova outburst in Corona Borealis as well as looking forward to China launching a sample return mission to the far side of the Moon.
We have our usual skyguide and chat about upcoming missions and some fun insights into the methane on Mars.

This month Dr Jen is off to the US for the Solar Eclipse while Paul is just back from Goonhilly Earth Station. We chat about the imminent demise of the Chandra Space Telescope, more news on the Hubble tension, and of course the Great North American Eclipse. 
Chinese Lunar ambitions, Starship making it to space and the first Boeing Starliner crew make the news while in this months history moment we talk about the brightest Stellar event witnessed by humans.
 

This podcast extra is our full length interview with Dr Helen Sharman, Britain's First astronaut and the first woman to visit the Russian Mir Space Station in 1991. 

This month our intrepid crew of the good ship Awesome investigate sub surface oceans on the moons of the solar system, smoking stars, distant blackholes, oversized structures and of course tippy over lunar landers. There is also the monthly skyguide and a look at the astro history of March!

This month Dr Jen talks to Dr Phil! Dr Phil Metzger, 30 years at NASA where he has worked on various missions and programmes including the ISS snd Space Shuttle, while more recently he has been investigating how rocket efflux interacts with soil and what this will mean for future landings on the Moon and Mars…

This month we explore the exciting announcements from the European Space Agency as they outline their new missions for the 2030s. LISA, a space based gravitational wave detector and EnVision, a Venus mission that will map the surface and under-surface of that planet in unprecedented detail. 
We have the usual skyguide, chat about recent lunar missions and emails from the listeners.