Now Launching: REACH: A Space Podcast for Kids

Artwork by Steven Lyons

Very excited to launch a new family-friendly children’s podcast entitled “Reach: A Space Podcast for Kids” a show I co-created and am co-producing alongside Chicago’s Soundsington Media. REACH is based on questions from kids about our galaxy (and beyond) with hosts Brian Holden and Meredith Stepien, and features fun at-home experiments and interviews with subject matter experts & thought partners from leading institutions. With music by Jesse Case, and artwork by Steven Lyons. Expert interviews from institutions like NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Cosmosphere, Adler Planetarium, and Exploration Place…and guest appearances from talented performers from shows like Stargate SG-1, Stranger Things, and The Good Place. Available wherever you get your podcasts!

Backstage Door to Space

Photo: Sandy Marshall

This is the famous walkway at the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center. The building is the astronaut’s version of a green room, home to crew quarter dorms and suit-up rooms. This specific set of doors has been made famous by countless photos and films documenting the 10-second walk down the ramp. On launch days, astronauts would wave to cameras before hopping in the Astrovan (or in 2020: a Tesla Model X) for the 9-mile ride to Launch Complex 39-A. Today, for the first time since the shuttle era, NASA is scheduled to launch 2 astronauts from KSC aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 & Crew Dragon at 4:33 EST for a trip to the ISS. Great second screen content for when you’re muted and multitasking on that afternoon conference call.

First Spacewalking Trio

On this day in 1992, NASA completed the first-ever 3-person spacewalk on the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s inaugural mission. Astronauts Richard J. Hieb, Thomas D. Akers and Pierre J. Thuot, pictured here, move a 4.5 ton communications satellite (about the size of a couple of Jeep’s). The mission also set a record for the first mission to feature 4 spacewalks. Fun facts: a spacewalk is usually called an EVA (aka “extravehicular activity), and it takes about 45 minutes to put on (aka “don”) a spacesuit. Also about the time it takes to watch an episode of Battlestar. So say we all. (Photo: NASA)

Morning Wake-Up Music

30 years ago: the Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (shown here). Built to give us a view from “the ultimate mountaintop,” Hubble led to new discoveries about black holes and an accelerating expansion of the universe. Fun fact: after astronauts completed the famed 1993 in-orbit repair, mission control played the song “I Can See Clearly Now” for the traditional wake-up music the following morning. Hubble will be succeeded by the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in March 2021 on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, to observe the most distant objects and unexplored planets in the universe. For the Hubble’s 30th anniversary, you can download iconic images taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (aka “WFPC2”) via JPL. Great for backgrounds on those Zoom meetings. (Photo: NASA)

Splashdown

50 years ago today: the crew of Apollo 13 landed in the South Pacific after the most harrowing space rescue in history. As with every mission, backstage flight controllers & support teams on the ground played a critical role in solving problems to help guide the astronauts safely home. About their return, Mission Commander Jim Lovell said: "And as long as we could get over one crisis after another, we kept, you know, thinking positive until we finally made the landing.” Fast forward to last night: NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, along with Cosmonaut (and Soyuz Commander) Oleg Skripochka, made this parachute-assisted landing in Kazakhstan after traveling over 100 million miles aboard the International Space Station. This crew of Expedition 62 studied the human body’s response to long-duration space flight, while Meir conducted the first of three all-woman spacewalks. (Photo: NASA)