Keck Institute for Space Studies - Audio

Professor Jim Bell from Arizona State University reviews some of the recent highlights from Mars surface missions (especially the continuing adventures of the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers), discusses the kinds of up-close contact science measurements that can be done from such robotic vehicles, and talks about how the lessons learned from these missions can influence future Mars, asteroid, and comet rovers and landers. (February 20, 2013).

Space agencies around the world, including in the United States, are increasing their reliance on private corporations to reduce costs and avoid long development cycles. But what is the impact on the space, planetary, and earth sciences? How will we strike a balance between scientific inquiry and the bottom line? An internationally renowned panel of scientists, industry executives, and policy experts discuss these issues and more (January 10, 2013).

JPL's Torrence Johnson discusses missions to primitive bodies (April 30, 2012).

JPL's Suzanne Smrekar discusses how Venus ended up so different from Earth today given its similar birth position in the solar disk (November 5, 2012).

Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo's Jordi Puig-Suari discusses how miniature spacecrafts are the choice for student satellites worldwide and are becoming a serious option for many missions being developed by traditional space organizations (October 30, 2012).

JPL's Christian Frankenberg discusses retrieval of chlorophyll fluorescence from space (August 26, 2012).

Joe Berry from Carnegie Institution for Sciences at Stanford gives a primer into photosynthesis and chlorophyll fluorescence (August 26, 2012).

Colorado State University's Ian Baker discusses the global carbon cycle (August 26, 2012).

Henry Garrett from JPL discusses ultra-reliability for interstellar missions (July 30, 2012).

Caltech's Richard Murray discusses control theory and methods (July 30, 2012).

JPL's Kim Gostelow discusses capturing flight software architecture using domain specific languages (July 30, 2012).

MIT's Brian Williams discusses autonomy practices (July 30, 2012).

JPL's Robert Rasmussen discusses principled system architecture (July 30, 2012).

Caltech's Shri Kulkarni discusses LIMSat (July 16, 2012).

Pumpkin Inc.'s Andrew Kalman discusses a nanosatellite designer's perspective (July 16, 2012).

James Cutler from the University of Michigan discusses the NSF CubeSat experiment (July 16, 2012).

Glenn Lightsey from UT Austin discusses the capabilities of the SmallSat platform (July 16, 2012).

JPL's Julie Castillo-Rogez discusses SmallSats mission concepts for planetary exploration (July 16, 2012).

Ranga Ram Chary from Caltech, Chris Martin from Caltech, Phil Nicholson from Cornell and Vassilis Angelopoulos from UCLA discuss small satellites in a panel moderated by Sterl Phinney (July 16, 2012).

JPL's Slava Turyshev discusses the history, recent progress and possible future directions for solar system tests of relativistic gravity in space (June 25, 2012).