The Skies of Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Science, Technology

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There appear to be more mini-Neptunes (also known as Super Earths) across our galaxy than any other type of planet. Hannah Wakeford wants to learn if some of them support life, and she’s doing this by exploring their skies. Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover, has reached an exciting and critical part of its mission of discovery. Senior editor Emily Lakdawalla provides an update. The beautiful Pasadena Public Library hosted Bruce Betts and Mat Kaplan for a special afternoon that included recording this week’s What’s Up. You can learn more about this week’s guests and topics at: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0501-2019-hannah-wakeford-mini-neptunes.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The skies of Super Earth's this week on planetary radio.
0:09.0	Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society,
0:12.0	with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.
0:17.0	By Super Earth's, we're not talking about Superman's home planet of Krypton.
0:22.0	You may prefer to call them mini Neptune's, as scientist Hannah
0:25.8	Wakeford does in a great planetary report article. I'll talk with her about these skies, including
0:32.1	their clouds.
0:33.7	This week's What Up segment with Bruce was recorded live at the beautiful Pasadena Public
0:38.8	Library.
0:39.8	Join us there near the end of the episode will begin by heading to Mars, which has its own
0:45.2	wispy clouds. Here's Planetary Society Senior Editor Emily Lochuwala.
0:50.2	Welcome back, Emily. It has been a while since we have talked about curiosity, our Martian friend. How is she doing up there?
0:58.0	The rover is doing pretty well, showing some signs of age for sure, but still getting a lot of science done in a place on
1:04.4	Mars that they've been trying to get to since they landed so the scientists are
1:08.2	pretty happy actually. Yeah a happy team you you make that report in your April 25 update, new drill holes despite memory problems.
1:17.0	How is the health of the spacecraft?
1:19.0	Well, there were some frustrating issues with the rover's memory a few weeks back.
1:24.7	You may recall that close to the beginning of the mission actually on Saul 200, the rover
1:28.8	had to switch from its main computer, its A side computer, to its backup computer, its B side computer because of a memory problem.
1:36.5	And things were fine on the B side computer for a long time until there's a couple of memory
1:42.1	issues on the B side computer that they were having trouble
1:44.5	figuring out so they swapped over to the A side computer again and turns out the A side computer
	...

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