Meet the Planetary Society’s Newest Asteroid Hunters

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Science, Technology

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2019

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Six amateur astronomers and small observatories around the world have just been named as the recipients of the 2019 Eugene Shoemaker Near Earth Object grants. You’ll meet an Italian who watches the skies in Sicily and a Minnesota high school teacher who remotely operates a telescope in Texas. Chief scientist Bruce Betts will tell us why the Society has proudly awarded this funding for 22 years. He’ll return for this week’s What’s Up. We’ve also got space exploration headlines from The Downlink. Learn more and enter the space trivia contest at https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/1218-2019-shoemaker-neo-winners.html

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Transcript

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0:00.0	They just want to save the world. The Shoemaker Neo Grant winners this week on
0:04.8	Planetary Radio.
0:07.0	Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our
0:16.0	solar system and beyond.
0:18.0	Shoemaker Neo, as in Eugene Shoemaker, Near Earth Object Grants.
0:23.5	The funding provided by the Planetary Society to amateur astronomers and small observatories
0:29.4	all over our planet that are part of the effort to discover, track, and characterize
0:34.4	asteroids and comets that cross Earth's orbit. A new group of awardees has just
0:40.4	been announced. We'll meet two of them after Bruce Betts provides an
0:43.8	overview of the program. The universe never rests and neither does space
0:48.6	exploration so here are a few headlines from the Downlink, our weekly Space News Digest from Planetary
0:55.8	Society editorial director Jason Davis.
0:59.4	NASA's Osiris Rex Mission has put a bullseye on asteroid Bennu.
1:05.1	The site chosen for collection of a surface sample is a 70 meter wide crater informally
1:10.1	called Nightingale. After a perilous descent, the spacecraft will begin its
1:15.0	return to Earth in February or March, with a long-awaited sample arriving in
1:20.3	2023. We'll see if we can get Principal investigator Dante Loretta back on the show before
1:26.1	long. Move over Benu. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab say they've found an
1:31.2	eye spot to land astronauts on Mars. They chose the northern
1:35.5	mid-latitude region because it appears there is water ice and lots of it just
1:41.2	centimeters below the surface.
1:43.0	Add energy and the newly arrived Martians will have air, rocket propellant,
	...

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