Join us on an incredible cosmic journey as we honor a space legend, examine lunar science concerns, celebrate aviation history reaching for the Moon, and discover how we track falling space debris!

In This Episode:

👩‍🚀 A Space Legend Retires - After an extraordinary 27-year career, record-setting astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams retires from NASA. We celebrate her incredible achievements, spacewalks, and the inspiring legacy she leaves for future generations of explorers.

🌙 Are We Contaminating the Moon? - Concerning update: Scientists warn that human Moon landings could be contaminating crucial evidence about life's origins on Earth. What's at stake, and how can we preserve lunar science while exploring?

✈️ From Kitty Hawk to the Moon - Historic tribute! NASA will fly a piece of the original Wright Brothers' airplane on the Artemis 2 mission, connecting humanity's first powered flight to our return to the Moon—121 years of aviation evolution in one symbolic gesture.

🛰️ Tracking Space Junk with Earthquake Sensors - Innovative science! Discover how earthquake detection networks can track space debris as it crashes back to Earth, helping scientists monitor the growing orbital junkyard and protect communities below.
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Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com
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Follow us on Social.
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Join us as we reflect on incredible breakthroughs, exciting launches, and mind-blowing discoveries that define the future of space exploration. 🚀

Suni Williams' Legacy, Moon Contamination & Wright Brothers Return to Flight

Join us on an incredible cosmic journey as we contemplate humanity's place in the cosmos, explore the galaxy-shaping power of black holes, and discover how cutting-edge technology is revolutionizing space exploration!

In This Episode:

🌌 Earth's Place in the Vast Universe - Take a step back and marvel at the sheer scale of the cosmos. From our tiny planet to galaxy superclusters spanning billions of light-years—where do we fit in this incomprehensible vastness?

🕳️ Black Holes: Architects of Galaxies - Supermassive black holes aren't just cosmic vacuum cleaners—they're the sculptors of entire galaxies! Discover how these gravitational giants control star formation, shape galactic structures, and influence the evolution of the universe itself.

🤖 AI: Space Exploration's New Frontier - Artificial intelligence is transforming how we explore space. From autonomous rovers on Mars to analyzing vast telescope data, learn how machine learning and AI are becoming our most powerful tools for cosmic discovery.

🔭 JWST: Window to Other Worlds - How does the James Webb Space Telescope find and study exoplanets light-years away? We break down the revolutionary technology that's allowing us to analyze alien atmospheres and search for signs of life beyond Earth.
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Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com
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Follow us on Social.
www.facebook.com/pulse95radio
www.twitter.com/pulse95radio
Join us as we reflect on incredible breakthroughs, exciting launches, and mind-blowing discoveries that define the future of space exploration. 🚀

Our Cosmic Home, Black Holes, AI & the Search for New Worlds

Another cosmic episode of Kalam Astro bringing you the latest from the final frontier!

This week we're covering breaking space news, fascinating discoveries about Jupiter's mysterious moon, and rethinking how we search for alien life.

✨ Episode Highlights:

🔥 Spacecraft's Final Moments - What really happens when a spacecraft makes its fiery descent? A fascinating look at controlled destruction

📰 Blue Origin's Big Shift - Space tourism on hold for 2+ years as the company pivots to lunar ambitions—what this means for commercial spaceflight

🧊 Europa's Thick Ice Shell - New findings reveal Jupiter's moon Europa has an 18-mile-thick ice crust. Could this impact the search for extraterrestrial life beneath?

👽 Rethinking Habitable Zones - Scientists say we might be looking in the wrong places for alien life. Where should we search instead?

Stay curious, keep looking up!
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Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com
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Follow us on Social.
www.facebook.com/pulse95radio
www.twitter.com/pulse95radio
Join us as we reflect on incredible breakthroughs, exciting launches, and mind-blowing discoveries that define the future of space exploration. 🚀

Spacecraft Destruction, Blue Origin's Pivot & Europa's Icy Secrets

Welcome back to Kalam Astro, where we explore the wonders of space and the latest discoveries from across the cosmos!

This episode takes you on a journey from hypothetical cosmic disasters to groundbreaking AI achievements on the Red Planet.

✨ What We're Exploring:

💫 Cosmic What-If Scenario - What would happen if another planet passed dangerously close to Earth? A fascinating dive into planetary dynamics and gravitational chaos

🌎 Cold Earth Discovery - Scientists find an Earth-like exoplanet just 146 light-years away that might sit in its star's habitable zone. Could this be a candidate for life?

🪐 Jupiter Just Got Smaller - New measurements reveal the gas giant isn't quite as large as we thought. What does this mean for our understanding of the solar system?

🤖 AI Drives on Mars - NASA's Perseverance rover makes history with its first autonomous AI-planned drive. The future of space exploration is getting smarter!

From theoretical disasters to real breakthroughs, this episode covers the spectrum of space science that keeps us looking up and wondering.
==
Listen to #Pulse95Radio in the UAE by tuning in on your radio (95.00 FM) or online on our website: www.pulse95radio.com
************************
Follow us on Social.
www.facebook.com/pulse95radio
www.twitter.com/pulse95radio
Join us as we reflect on incredible breakthroughs, exciting launches, and mind-blowing discoveries that define the future of space exploration. 🚀

Planetary Close Encounters, Cold Earths & AI on Mars

Out there in the Universe, we're most aware of what we see: of all the forms of light that arrive in our eyes, instruments, telescopes, and detectors. Much more difficult to see, as well as understand and make sense of, is the wide array of "stuff" that's present, but that isn't readily apparent to the apparatuses we normally use to reveal the Universe. From the dark bands of the Milky Way to the light-blocking materials in nebulae and clouds, all the way to lining the arms of spiral galaxies and the heavy, long-chained molecules found in protoplanetary disks, cosmic dust is perhaps our most enduring mystery.

Sure, it gives absorption signatures that we can leverage, and at long enough infrared wavelengths, dust that gets heated has its own emission signatures, but we can generally only observe it in detail up close: within our own galaxy or in the nearest galaxies of all. That poses a huge challenge, because the origin of dust, including from a cosmic perspective, remains only very poorly understood. We may have identified many dust-producing sources in the Universe, and we may understand that the young Universe was a lot less dusty than our modern cosmos, but we still lack an understanding of how this has come to be the case. Thankfully, we have scientists on the case, like this month's guest: Dr. Elizabeth Tarantino of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

In this fascinating interview, she takes us on a journey spanning gently dying stars, the formation of new stellar systems, the outskirts of our cosmic backyard, and to the farthest reaches of JWST as we try and piece this mysterious cosmic story together. Buckle up for an exciting and informative ride; you'll be glad you tuned in!

(This image shows the Pillars of Creation within the Eagle Nebula, as assembled by two entirely different data sets. On the upper-right, a visible light view showcases how this dusty region obscures the stars behind it. On the lower-left, an infrared view showcases the stars, although reddened, that can be seen behind the dusty cloud. At still longer wavelengths, the dust would glow due to the heat inside of this region. ⁠Credit⁠: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. DePasquale, A. Koekemoer, A. Pagan (STScI), ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team)

Starts With A Bang 126 - The origin of dust

From the Universal Frequency album 'Phase Transition' (2025). Recorded in 2018. Available on cassette and digital here: https://permusicaadastra.bandcamp.com/album/phase-transition

Gravitational Lensing

When most of us were children, and we went to a rural area with clear skies overhead at night, we were all greeted by the same familiar sight: a dark night sky, glittering with many hundreds or even thousands of stars. Depending on how dark your sky was, you could spot up to 6000 stars at once, as well as deep-sky objects, the plane of the Milky Way, and only the rare, occasional satellite streak. As time went on, more and more satellites were launched, bringing us up to around 2000 active satellites as of 2019.

And then we entered the era of satellite megaconstellations, beginning with the launch of the first Starlink satellites. Now, nearly 7 full years later, there are over 17,000 active and defunct satellite payloads in orbit, with approximately 100 times as many satellites proposed in the coming years. From satellite communications to direct-to-phone links to the proposition of AI data centers in space, the number of proposed use cases has exploded. However, as the environment around Earth becomes more crowded, the risks, the harms, and the potential for disaster all grow evermore severe, with woefully insufficient (or, sometimes, no) mitigation measures in place.

Is this a cause for despair? Or could this be our finest hour in terms of combatting these new forms of pollution. I've brought expert Dr. Meredith Rawls onto the podcast this episode to discuss satellites and space pollution, and the conversation ranges from thoughtful to passionate to pessimistic to hopeful many times over. Have a listen; you don't want to be underinformed about this one!

Helpful links:

IAU's center for the protection of dark and quiet skies: https://cps.iau.org/

NRAO/VLA's paper on radio telescope operations coordinating with satellite providers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15068v1

Vera C. Rubin's public alerts stream: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/first-alerts

An article on Rocket plumes: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-03154-8

Meredith's Nature News and Views piece regarding streaks in space telescopes: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03725-x 

The latest on the CRASH clock: https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

Astronomers argue for astronomy on the ground and in space: https://spacenews.com/the-future-of-astronomy-is-both-on-earth-and-in-space/ 

and Yvette Cendes's previous appearance on the SWAB podcast: https://soundcloud.com/ethan-siegel-172073460/starts-with-a-bang-77-stellar-destruction and https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xnBB0Ma4SzHk8ulziOidk

(The illustration shows all tracked objects in space as of 2025, as shown by the European Space Agency. The size of the objects, including intact satellites as well as space debris, is greatly exaggerated, but the number of objects shown is actually far less than the number of objects in space now in 2026, just one year later. Credit: European Space Agency)

Starts With A Bang #127 - Satellites and space pollution

From the Celestial Mechanics 12" 'Black Hole Dynamics' (2019), available on vinyl/digital here: https://permusicaadastra.bandcamp.com/album/black-hole-dynamics

Gravitational Time Dilation

Originally broadcast on The Dream Machine channel on www.interglaactic.fm on 13th July 2025.

FUNCKARMA - Troposphere
CARBON BASED LIFEFORMS - Leaves (Extended)
BIOSPHERE - The Storr
PHOENECIA - How Long Is Forever
AUTECHRE - Perlence subrange 3
APHEX TWIN - White Blur 2
GLOBAL COMMUNICATION - 9:39

4-D TRAVELLER - Drifting In Infinity

How do we "autopsy" a galaxy from billions of light-years away? Join  world-renowned astrophysicist Dr. Elisabete da Cunha as she  sits down with Astrophiz host Brendan O’Brien to explore the life, evolution, and eventual "death" of the most massive structures in the universe.

From her early inspirations under the stars of Portugal to her groundbreaking work in Extragalactic Astronomy, Elisabete shares her personal journey and the high-tech tools used to decode Starlight, Cosmic Dust, and Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs).
In this episode, we dive into:

Galaxy Evolution: How star systems grow and transform over billions of years.

Radio Astronomy: Using invisible light to peer into the deep universe.

Stellar Populations: What the chemistry of stars tells us about the history of space.

Cosmology & Dark Matter: The invisible forces shaping our galactic neighborhood.

Whether you are a student of astrophysics or a casual stargazer, this conversation offers a unique, charming, and deeply insightful window into the forensic evidence of our universe.

Read the full transcript and see the show notes at: https://astrophiz.com/2026/03/18/galaxy-forensics-with-dr-elisabete-da-cunha-astrophiz-230/

Subscribe to Astrophiz for your monthly dose of space science, telescope technology, and expert interviews.

Full Transcript

Galaxy Forensics: Decoding Galaxy Evolution with Dr. Elisabete da Cunha (Astrophiz 230)

Exceptional Interviews with exceptional scientists.
Brendan sometimes even gets how and why science works, and each month he conducts in-depth interviews with leading astro and space researchers. In each episode we feature Astrophysicists, Space Scientists, Particle Physicists, Data scientists, Antenna engineers, Instrument scientists, optical & radio astronomers, Satcomm engineers, project leaders and aurora hunters. For Astrophotographers, also each month we also hear from Dr Ian ‘Astroblog’ Musgrave who tells us when, where and what to look for in the sky over the coming weeks and explains astronomical phenomena in ‘Ian’s Tangent’.
This ongoing series has taken us through the history, theory and practice of radio astronomy from Faraday to Gravitational waves. Each episode includes the latest news roundup in this golden age of astrophysics. Enjoy!  This podcast is free, ad-free and unsponsored, the way all good science is.

Alya Al Nuaimi invites you to embark on an intergalactic adventure through the cosmos with Kalam Astro. Stay up to date with the latest global and local astronomy news, including interviews with industry experts, and discover the secrets of the universe with mind-bending theories. Want some helpful tips on stargazing? Alya has got you covered.

Odds and sods and bits and bobs from the extensive DIY music catalogue of James Penrose, recording since 1990 and releasing under a stack of guises (4-D Traveller, Planetary Technicians, Esper Connection, Celestial Mechanics, Universal Frequency, Chromatic Paradox, Antares Destiny, Casionova, Starcrusher, The Dusty Wizard, Electric Rain, etc etc). Also the man behind Magic Waves Festivals and Radio (broadcasting since 2006), to be found on Intergalactic FM, and founder/co-founder of various labels (Cyber Dance, Magic Waves, Per Musica Ad Astra, Spectral Realms and others). If you enjoy any of this music please head over to bandcamp and buy some of it to help keep the ship afloat! Cheers!!

https://permusicaadastra.bandcamp.com/

https://www.discogs.com/artist/6673132-James-Penrose

https://soundcloud.com/magicwaves

https://soundcloud.com/per-musica-ad-astra

https://www.intergalactic.fm/

Dresden-based Label for electronic listening music, inspired and dedicated to ambient, krautrock, kosmische/cosmic and experimental music.

Support us at bandcamp: www.permusicaadastra.bandcamp.com

Per Musica Ad Astra mix on every Sunday at 19:00 CET on www.intergalactic.fm (The Dream Machine channel).

New tracks tagged #Astrophysics