The Planetary Society goes to TwitchCon 2025

Sarah Al-Ahmed: The Planetary Society goes to TwitchCon this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. We're headed into the world of live-streaming to explore how science communication is evolving on Twitch, a platform that's best known for game streaming, but has become an unexpected hub for space outreach and education. We'll start with my conversation with Moohoodles, one of the first space science streamers on Twitch and my co-host for our live panel at TwitchCon 2025.

Then we'll share highlights from the panel itself, including a special message from our CEO Bill Nye and a discussion about the future of space exploration and public engagement. Later, you'll hear from two amazing science communicators I met at the Science & Technology MeetUp: Shark Geek, who combines 360-degree shark videos, educational games, and even metal music to inspire shark conservation; and Paleontologizing, who livestreams real fossil excavations.

He'll tell us a little bit more about how exploring the study of earth's ancient past can help us understand our place in the cosmos. After that, Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations, joins me for a space policy update about the renomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator, and why his commercial vision for the agency has sparked a lot of debate. And we'll wrap up as always with What's Up with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist. We'll celebrate the third anniversary of the end of our LightSail 2 mission, The Planetary Society's mission that helped inspire many of the science streamers that I met at TwitchCon.

If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.

Twitch is a live-streaming platform that started as a place where gamers shared their playthroughs. But over the last decade, it's evolved into a home for all sorts of creators, including artists, musicians, athletes, cosplayers, scientists, and educators. It's a space where people can interact in real time and build communities around what they love.

Once a year, those online communities come together in person for TwitchCon, a massive convention filled with panels, workshops, and meet and greets. This year's con was held in San Diego, California from October 17th to 19th, and it marked TwitchCon's 10th anniversary. The Planetary Society was invited to join the celebration to share more of what's going on in space right now, but also how space science fits into the world of live-streaming.

Our invitation came from Moohoodles or Moo, one of Twitch's pioneering space science streamers. For more than a decade, she's been building a community of people who love astrobiology and space exploration. Over the past year, I've done a couple of livestream events with Moohoodles. I sat down with her to discuss how she started, how live-streaming has impacted science communication, and what moments have inspired her most during her years of sharing space with the world. Hey, Moo.

Moohoodles: Hello.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Seriously, thank you so much for inviting me to come to TwitchCon this year with you. I had such a fun time.

Moohoodles: It was so much fun, and thank you so much for joining. I'm so happy you were able to make it and share your expertise on our panel.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we've had a lot of fun over the last year or so, jumping into your streams every now and again. I'm just going to come out and say it, you're definitely my favorite space streamer. I'm sure there are others out there, but I just love your channel and everyone in your community is so lovely to talk to. I've had such a great time.

Moohoodles: Oh, thank you so much. That means a lot to me, and I'm sure my community will also be very happy to hear that. I'm honored. Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How long have you been streaming about space? And what made you decide to launch this Twitch channel about space science and planetary science?

Moohoodles: Yeah. So I've been streaming on Twitch for over 11 years. I started in May of 2014. Initially, I started just to do video game stuff. There wasn't non-gaming content on Twitch at the time, at least I was aware of. So I would actually just bring my passion for space and my love of space into my streams, just as I was playing video games. I would just talk about that stuff with chat or nerd out about it.

I remember at the beginning of 2015 playing Fallout 3 and talking about Mars and the potential for life on Mars, and maybe sending humans there one day just because that's what excites me, that's what I like to talk about. And people were into it. I ran the astronomy club at my college for a while, and I have always been obsessed with astrobiology, so I wanted to bring the lectures that I did for that astronomy club onto my streams as well.

So I started doing specific segments for that, and yeah, it turned out really well. There was an audience for it, and that made me really excited because I love talking about this and sharing my passion. I didn't really expect it to turn into a career for me, especially back then. I had no idea it could be possible. I never would've imagined it turning into something where you could increase scientific literacy and media literacy and build a community of people so passionate and so excited about space, who really want to make a positive difference in the world and in the future that we want to see, which is also why we love The Planetary Society.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, it's a very different experience of science education. When I was a kid, it was all science documentaries and television shows, but streaming is a very different thing. What kind of impact would you say that streaming has in space outreach versus these more traditional forms of media?

Moohoodles: I love that. I totally agree with what you said, by the way, we only had science communication stuff on shows and everything. Bill Nye was a huge inspiration to me. It actually kind of started... I don't want to say it started my career, but he did an AMA on Reddit in 2014, and that's the day I made my YouTube channel. He answered one of my questions and it was so inspiring to me. I didn't even know you could be a science communicator. I just thought, "Oh, maybe one day I could get a TV show," or "I'll make a YouTube channel talking about this because I want to share how cool all of this stuff is with people." And then that obviously has turned into something more with me through Twitch and everything. But yeah, I think Twitch is definitely a bit more unique compared to YouTube or a TV show or anything because it is live and it's interactive. That is the key to Twitch, so you can have people in chat come in and just ask questions live to you, and there's a lot of actual scientists on Twitch now who are there to interact and chat with you, and they want you to ask questions. One thing I do on my stream, because I know there's a lot of weird, maybe pseudoscience, but more so misinformation out there, and especially with 3I/ATLAS recently, right?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, yeah.

Moohoodles: I don't expect anyone to be able to decipher through these headline articles and everything because most people don't spend three days a week looking at space news. It's just a quick blip of it. So I make my Twitch channel open to having questions where you can ask for clarification and not be judged. It's a very welcoming open space where it's like, "Wait, I heard 3I/ATLAS is an alien spacecraft or something," and I can be like, "Oh, no, let me explain what it actually is and where that came from so you have a better understanding of it, and then also maybe a few things you can look out for in headline articles, so you are more aware of that and can see these red flags for misinformation next time too." So yeah, I think Twitch is a really unique and awesome environment because you're able to talk to so many different people, and especially in the science and technology category, there's so many different scientists. You can ask questions directly related to their fields, and it's something that I feel like we didn't have a decade ago really.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I know that there were things that I believed that were completely wrong because I read them once in a science book that hadn't yet been updated, and it was a decade or more before I got to ask that question of an actual scientist, and now you can literally just log onto Twitch and ask these questions directly. But I think what you point out about the science and technology category is really important because it finally feels like we've hit this critical mass where there were so many science educators on Twitch that it necessitated the creation of a whole new category. What would you say that that's done for the visibility of science communicators on the platform?

Moohoodles: It's definitely given us a place to exist and a place to be seen, which is huge. If people are looking for science on Twitch or science communication or just something different and non-gaming content, they can go to the science and technology category and see who's currently live right now and check them out. It's been really exciting to have that category a bit more bolstered so people can see like, "Hey, there is actually science communication on Twitch. There's people nerding out on space, sharing their views from telescopes." There's so many amazing, amazing streamers. One unexpected side effect of that that I'd like to share is that there's been a lot more cross-collaboration, I feel, and this is really important as you know in sciences. But on Twitch, there's different scientists or different people who are into this stuff and they are collaborating together, talking about things in their different fields and learning about them and getting inspired. So there's legitimate science, and research is getting influenced by this relatively small community on Twitch.

One of my friends, VolcanoDoc, does a whole bunch of awesome science on her stream and reads through papers and has been working on her own research on her stream. And her and I collaborated once talking about volcanology stuff and the asteroids impacting on earth and how that could have created life from an astrobiology standpoint. And it was just super fascinating and there's so many different things like that where you maybe wouldn't expect a volcanologist and an astrobiologist or a paleontologist or whoever to get together and talk and have overlap or something. But then you realize there is overlap or it unlocks this other part of your brain of like, "Wait, I could actually use this in something that I'm working on." So I've seen a lot of that happen on Twitch and it's so cool and so fascinating to see.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's really great to hear because I think so much in the scientific community, we try to reach out to people that are in our similar field, but there's so much that can be revealed and so much new science that can happen when you get to cross-contaminate between different fields, right?

Moohoodles: Yeah. Yeah, it is awesome.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's so cool. What would you say are some of your favorite moments that you've had during your many, many years of streaming?

Moohoodles: Oh, my gosh. There's been so many great moments. A huge highlight for me was actually just in October of last year when I got to go to Kennedy Space Center and stream the Europa Clipper launching on a Falcon Heavy rocket. I did a whole live stream of our tour around Kennedy Space Center, at least what I could stream. And it was incredible. That was my first rocket launch that I've ever seen, and I got so emotional on my stream.

I sat there and just cried for a while in pure awe, and it was just a full-circle moment for me because back when I was trying to do a different major in college doing astrophysics, that was my end goal, was doing astrobiology, working on Europa Clipper mission and being able to be there in a different light as a science communicator, as a Twitch streamer, sharing this so people get excited about it.

Yeah, there was a lot of emotions, but it was amazing and it was so cool to see it launch, and I'm so excited for that mission. Obviously, I've been able to talk to you, which has been wonderful. You've been on my stream a few times and so many other amazing scientists and people. It's always really fun to chat with others and learn more about what they do. I was one of the featured watch parties for the Vera Rubin Observatory coming online.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, that's so cool.

Moohoodles: And that was so cool. I actually got access to the photos and everything before it came online. I got it the night before. And it took everything in me to not look at them, so my initial reaction could be shared live on Twitch and also with my community. Something we like doing together is having these experiences together as a community, being able to share that with a broader audience and other people on Twitch, it's such an amazing feeling and it's this cool communal... It's hard to explain, but it's awesome to share these moments with others.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What is an average day of your stream like? What do you share with people?

Moohoodles: Yeah. So I start every stream off just looking at some current news in outer space and astrobiology. Astrobiology is the love of my life. I'm, to be clear, not an expert in the field or anything. It's just a huge passion of mine. I would maybe like to do further education in the future on it though. But yeah, I love to share just all of the cool things going on in space. So we look at new images from different space telescopes, we see what's happening, what kind of research is going on. And after I do my science communication stuff and we catch up on all the cool current news happening, I also play video games from retro up to newer stuff. We also do a lot of space games. I will bring the science communication from whatever we talked about earlier, just whatever I know into a lot of the space games we play too.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Honestly, if I have two true passions in life, it's space exploration and communication and video games. So seeing someone whose whole career now is sharing these things online is absolutely inspiring to me because I think if I had had that example as a younger person, it might have completely changed the arc of my life, right?

Moohoodles: Yeah. And that's something I wish I had when I was younger too because I was always such a huge gaming nerd. I love the sciences. I never thought that you could mix it together like this, but when you dig deeper into it, and this is something I love talking about on my stream as well, you don't have to be a scientist with a PhD to work in space or to make a difference in these fields.

Obviously, there's amazing citizen science happening, and if you want to be at the cutting edge of research, of course you need to. But maybe you love video games and you know a decent amount of science, or you took a lot of physics classes, you could do game development for space games and have those passions overlap. It's just so cool that there's so many different avenues for people to go into for their careers or different things that they're interested in. And I definitely agree, it's awesome to see so much happening on Twitch, especially the gaming sci-comm overlap. I love doing that stuff.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, for anyone who's listening to this and might be intrigued by the idea of doing it themselves, do you have any advice?

Moohoodles: I feel like consistency is key. Picking what kind of content you want to cover, being consistent in your content and consistent in your schedule. Posting on outside social media things outside of Twitch is really helpful. That's something I need to get better at personally. But yeah, I feel like just going for it, taking your passion, being yourself, and just being the most authentic version of you because there's only one you and just full-on sending it. Yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right. Send it. Send it. Are there any other space or science communicators on Twitch that you recommend for people?

Moohoodles: Yeah, I would love to do a huge shout-out to my friend, Astro Canuck. He does amazing astronomy education streams and also astrophotography. He has an awesome telescope that he will livestream from his telescope and do astrophotography, and it's so cool to have that on Twitch. I'd also like to shout out Melissa in De Nile. She's an Egyptologist, an archeologist, and that is something I've always been so fascinated about. So seeing her streams, I'm like, "You're an actual Egyptologist. I can ask you all these questions or learn about it." It's so cool.

And similar to what I do, she also will play video games and talk about the Egyptology and all of the cool stuff in the game she plays and how accurate or not accurate it is. Obviously, she posts things on TikTok and everything as well. There's a lot of incredible things that she does. Draw Curiosity is really cool as well. She's an insect flight biomechanic. I know. She has a whole great YouTube channel on things that draw her curiosity. So it's awesome to see her sharing her passion and her expertise, and it's been amazing to see her join Twitch and grow on Twitch. And yeah, I think she's absolutely incredible. So would recommend.

Also, Paleontologizing is really cool. He is a paleontologist and he educates and talks all about the field and dinosaurs and how birds are dinosaurs and just so much incredible stuff. I think we all have seen Jurassic Park or there's just so many kids and even adults who are just so fascinated and interested by dinosaurs. So it's so cool to be able to go into his stream and chat with him live about it, but he doesn't always just sit in his office talking about dinosaurs and everything.

He actually goes and digs up dinosaur bones. He does actual live dinosaur digs on his stream, and it's some of the coolest content I've ever seen because that's something I never thought would be accessible to me as just a normal everyday person. I'm not a paleontologist. I can't go into the field and see this stuff happening, but I can and everyone can through his live Twitch stream. So it's absolutely incredible.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we're going to hear a little bit from Paleontologizing later on in this episode because we met up at the Science & Technology MeetUp with a bunch of other space streamers later on at TwitchCon. So I had so much fun meeting everyone while I was there, and I just want to thank you again for inviting me. I had such a fascinating time, not just meeting all these people, but learning all these technologies for how to stream, and I've been so inspired by all the people I met there, the moderators, the fans.

It was just one of the highlights of my last year, for sure. So thank you again for inviting me there, but also onto your stream and for everything you're doing, sharing space with people. I think it's a really unique platform and you're doing it in such a beautiful way and I'm just so grateful for what you do.

Moohoodles: Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it, and I'm so glad you had a great time at TwitchCon meeting everyone, so I'm glad you had a wonderful experience, and thank you again for joining.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much, Moo. I've been wanting to go to TwitchCon for years and finally getting to be there was a fantastic experience. I spent the three days of the convention meeting dozens of science streamers and handing out Planetary Society convention ribbons. I even ran into a few Planetary Society members who were there in the crowd. Between panels and jumping onto random people's livestreams and a surprising number of concerts, it was a reminder of how creative and passionate the live-streaming community really is.

Of course, the biggest highlight for me was Moohoodles and my live panel in NomNom Theater called The Planetary Society: Space, Time, and You. We were absolutely thrilled to bring space science back to the stage at TwitchCon. We were also looking forward to sharing that stage with representatives from NASA, but unfortunately because of the ongoing government shutdown, they weren't able to attend.

Still, the show must go on, and we did our best to share a lot of the wonderful things that NASA has been doing in general, but also all of the things that they've been live-streaming on Twitch. What you're about to hear is an edited short segment from that discussion, a celebration of what's going on in space exploration at NASA and at The Planetary Society, and about the power of sharing science on livestream.

Moohoodles: Hi, everyone.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Good morning.

Moohoodles: Good morning. But yeah, welcome to our panel, NASA and The Planetary Society: Space, Time, and You. But yeah, NASA was not able to be here due to the government shutdown, and I know they were very, very excited to come here and share their knowledge and talk to each and every one of you. Honestly, NASA really loves talking to people, especially people who watch Twitch. So I'm Moohoodles. I am a full-time streamer. I do science communication on outer space and astrobiology. I also do variety gaming from retro up to new stuff I've been streaming over 11 years. I helped pioneer science communication on the platform and I'm so happy to be here and joined by Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thanks so much for having me. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed. I'm the host of Planetary Radio at The Planetary Society, which is a weekly space podcast. We talk about things that are going on in space exploration around the world, and we're produced by The Planetary Society, which is the world's largest space interest nonprofit.

We have tens of thousands of people around the world, and just as TwitchCon is celebrating their 10-year anniversary, we're celebrating our 45th anniversary as an organization. Our CEO is Bill Nye The Science Guy. Bill couldn't be here in person because he is all over the place trying to advocate for NASA right now if you've seen him out and about, but he did take the time to record a video for us because he wanted to show you guys some love.

Bill Nye: Greetings, TwitchConsters. Bill Nye here, CEO of The Planetary Society. We promote the scientific exploration of space, and speaking of which, at Twitch, this is the most exciting time in space exploration since the Apollo era. We have a better chance today of answering the two deep questions than we've ever had in history: where did we come from? And are we alone in the cosmos?

To answer those questions, we need to explore space, and in order to explore space, we've got to get people excited about it and promote the value of it. That's where you all come in, these science communicators, you sci-commsters. So a shout-out to all of you and to Moohoodles for making this possible. Working together, we can, dare I say it, change the world. Thank you. Have a good conference.

Moohoodles: I'm so excited and I'm so grateful that Bill took the time to do that video. And yeah, he's awesome. A big inspiration to me. So yeah, essentially, during this panel we want to talk about celebrating 10 years of TwitchCon, 45 years of The Planetary Society. I've been streaming over 11 years. We're going to talk about the past, present and the future that we want to see of space exploration. So here's a little bit on the history and highlights, some milestones going on.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: NASA has done a lot of things in space, but I'm not sure how many people are aware of how many other organizations are trying to do this kind of work. One of our biggest things that we ever did together was the LightSail mission. It was the first all-crowdfunded space mission in history. 50,000 people around the world donated their money so that we could build a solar sail.

Essentially, we built a spacecraft that could actually test whether or not light bouncing off of a solar sail was a viable means of propulsion for a spacecraft. And since we proved that, and I do have to give a shout-out to the Japanese space agency, JAXA, they accomplished it before us. So now NASA and other space agencies around the world are trying to use this technology in order to create space missions that don't need any fuel.

Moohoodles: That's actually the mission that got me to join The Planetary Society.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's amazing.

Moohoodles: Yeah, in 2014, I got a little piece of LightSail and everything. It's so cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There's a bunch of other technology we've been working on. PlanetVac is a little vacuum you stick onto the feet of your landers when you land on other worlds, and it sucks up material so you can get samples by just landing on a place. We tested it this year on a mission that went to the moon as part of the Commercial Lunar Services program.

You may also be familiar with the Europa Clipper mission that is now on its way to the moon of Jupiter. That one is an ocean world. Part of the reason that mission exists at all is because space fans like you advocated for it. The number of times that that mission was almost canceled, it was our largest letter-writing campaign ever, and we saved Europa Clipper.

Moohoodles: Here's some NASA highlights that we want to cover, even though NASA can't be here. But the Perseverance Rover, they did a whole livestream for the landing in 2021, and that was absolutely amazing. I know that was a huge deal for NASA. There was a ton of people watching it, and it was an absolute win for their Twitch stream as well. A big thing that NASA wants to do, from my understanding, is scientific outreach and getting people excited and inspired to go into STEM or to support NASA in what they're doing and be really, really thrilled about it. So having these livestreams on Twitch where they can interact with the audience and share this with millions of people around the world live is such a huge deal for them to be able to do. So I know that was a big win for them.

And yeah, the top right photo there is Europa Clipper launching. I actually got to go to Kennedy Space Center and livestream that launch. And y'all, that was such a highlight of my life. It was amazing. That was my first rocket launch I've ever seen. It launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket, and it is currently on the way to Jupiter's moon, Europa, and it'll get there in 2030. So if you're not familiar with Europa, it has 10-plus miles of ice and a subsurface ocean larger than all of earth's oceans combined. So there's a lot of water on there. And Europa Clipper is not technically a life detection mission, but we're going to learn more about the subsurface ocean and know good places to land a follow-up mission and see if it has everything needed to harbor life. The bottom photo there is Astronaut Don Pettit.

This was the first ever live-streamed Twitch conversation with an astronaut on the International Space Station. We have the technology. We are doing that stuff now, and it is so exciting. I know in the future, NASA wants to do more things like this. They even talked about maybe one day we'll be having livestreams from Mars or something or from the moon. He showed his camera setup and everything, and by the way, if you miss the live stream of this, it is highlighted on NASA's Twitch page. So if you're not following them, please, please go to twitch.tv/nasa. Follow them and yeah, go check out their streams. But I think this stuff really, it inspires me because it always makes me wonder or just think about the vastness of space and how much is out there waiting to be discovered that we don't know.

And sometimes we get answers to our questions, we learn more. We're like, "Hey, we actually answered this huge question," but a lot of the times we don't get those answers, and instead we get more questions. And I think that's really exciting because we're able to just learn so much more about space and get closer to the truth of... I didn't want to say the truth of the universe because that sounds weird. But just learning more about cosmology and everything. It's so fascinating. I think my favorite thing about space is just the unknown and all of these photos just make me think about that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There's so much out there to be discovered. And every time we learn something new, it's not just about like, "Oh, now I know something cool about that random world we're never going to discover." The spinoff technologies, the ways that it makes our lives better, it's just so profound. This is why we do this, right? I think there's something about it. You learn about space and it gets into your soul.

Moohoodles: It really does, and I feel like a lot of things... I always put it on my stream. We have another little puzzle piece that gets us closer to an actual answer. And astrobiology is the love of my life. So I love talking about every article we read, every news update, that's another extra little puzzle piece of, are we alone in the universe? And that is truly one of humanity's perhaps oldest and deepest questions, and we might have the answer to that within the next decade, within the next few years.

For me at least, maybe I don't want to be too much of a hype woman, but it feels like any day now we're going to get that huge news. And I know we have the Mars sample from Perseverance, the Cheyava Falls sample sitting on the surface of Mars that the Perseverance Rover collected. That's the bottom left image there. And so essentially, those leopard spots, as they call it in the center of the image, could have been formed from life.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There are these poppy seeds and leopard spots in this rock. We find these kinds of things here on earth, but it's usually because some kind of life was doing some kind of chemical process that was taking some material and turning it into something else. And they found that on Mars in an area where we know all of the materials for life were present, it used to have liquid water, and now we have a sample of it. I'm not saying it's life. We still need to figure that out, but presently in that temperature environment, there's no way that we know of to make this kind of rock without life being present without some kind of microbial life, and that's huge.

Moohoodles: Yeah, I talk about this on my stream all the time, and I'm a very strong advocate for the Mars sample return mission. But yeah, essentially, those could have been created in a high acidity or a high heat environment, abiotically, meaning not from life. But the review that came out earlier mentioned that they didn't find evidence of that. So as you said, it's not, "Hey, this is totally life," but essentially before we can confirm if it's from life or not, we really need to bring those back to earth.

It is just sitting there, it is waiting. The answers, they're so close. But yeah, the past highlights for me on Twitch is what this site is about and all the things I just love and enjoy talking about. I had the opportunity and the privilege to be on the front page of Twitch for my 10-year stream-aversary last year, and that's me being very excited that I got to show off Saturn's moon, Enceladus, on there. And that is one of my favorite moons. Similar to Europa, it has an icy surface, a liquid water ocean, and we know a lot about it due to NASA's Cassini mission flying through Saturn's rings and analyzing all of the dust and actually water vapor that is being spewed out from Enceladus at a rate of 79 gallons a second.

And they actually found that Enceladus has everything needed to harbor life, and in my opinion, it might be the best place in the solar system to look for life outside of earth. But with that said, obviously Europa's a great place, Mars is a great place, even maybe the atmosphere of Venus. Neptune's moon, Triton, also has an icy surface and liquid water, and that's way out there. So there's a lot of really exciting places for astrobiology and to seek answers.

But we really need to make sure these missions are happening to bring the samples back or even go out there and check it out. Like you mentioned, Europa Clipper was almost canceled several times, and that's a big thing that I really appreciate about The Planetary Society is the fierce advocacy y'all do so NASA missions can happen. Because I do the same stuff on my stream, trying to get people excited, educate people on what's going on, and how we can make a difference and try to point us towards the future that we all want to see.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: If you'd like to watch our full panel, you can find it on Moohoodles' YouTube channel, or right on this episode page at planetary.org/radio. After our panel, but before I headed home from TwitchCon, I stopped at the science and technology meet and greet. It brought together science communicators from across Twitch, people using live-streaming to share everything from astrophysics to archeology. It was at that meet and greet that I met Shark Geek and Paleontologizing. Here's a bit of what they had to say.

SharkG33k: So I am Shark Geek, SharkG33k. I stream what I call content creation for shark conservation. I film sharks with a 360-degree camera, and then I use that footage to teach people about them, get them excited about talking about shark science, shark conservation. I make educational games about them. I make educational shark-themed metal music, if you can believe it. A little bit of everything. Casting a broad net, pun intended, I am fascinated by space exploration. Absolutely love it.

A lot of my friends actually, and people that I follow and watch regularly are space exploration streamers and astronomer streamers. I can't get enough. Folks like Moohoodles, Nerduino, Astro Canuck, they are the best. When they're on at night, I don't miss it. The education side of Twitch is growing more and more, and so I think just the more we get the word out there that Twitch is a place for education, the better off everybody is because I want to see that whole side of the community just absolutely blow up.

Paleontologizing: My name is Danny Anduza. Paleontologizing is the Twitch channel, and I do Paleontologizing on Twitch. So going out and digging up dinosaurs live, going over new scientific papers with the audience when I'm back in my office, interviewing other paleontologists, doing Q&A, 3D printing, artwork, all kinds of cool stuff. I think that's a key part of being human, is exploring what's out there, whether it's looking into the earth's ancient past or looking into the future of human travel in space.

I think the most important thing is we're out here. There are scientists on Twitch trying to do live outreach, and we're growing in number. It's been really cool to see this year at TwitchCon just the number of scientists that we have here at the convention, and we've had multiple panels and meet and greets and things like that. So we're trying to really grow this mission of science education on the platform.

As a paleontologist, sometimes I get the question like, "What use is fossil science? Why is this important to fund? Why should people care about it?" And perspective is the thing that paleontology gives us that almost nothing else can. For example, think about how the dinosaurs went extinct. You had this massive asteroid, the size of San Francisco, that slammed into the earth's crust and it caused a mass extinction event. We would not be here today if that hadn't happened, but that also tells us that we need to be wary of big objects near our planet.

And so the perspective that paleontology gives us can lead us to look up to the stars and make sure that we can keep our planet safe. So there are people who are tracking these near-earth objects, and that makes me feel a little bit better about this as a paleontologist to know that there are folks whose job it is to track these things and possibly deflect them if they're headed toward us, that could one day save humanity, could save our planet. So it's vitally important.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back with the rest of TwitchCon 2025 after the short break.

Kate Howells: Hi, I'm Kate Howells, public education specialist for The Planetary Society. It's time to celebrate the most inspiring space moments and missions of 2025. Every year, we invite space fans around the world to help decide The Planetary Society's Best of the Year Awards, honoring the discoveries, missions, and images that made us all look up and wonder. Now it's time to pick your favorites from 2025. From daring new spacecraft to breathtaking cosmic images, your votes help celebrate the people and projects pushing the boundaries of exploration. Cast your vote today at planetary.org/bestof2025. That's planetary.org/bestof2025.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It was such a joy to spend that weekend surrounded by so many people that care not just about science and creativity, but about the ways that they can share who they are and connect with people around the world. I want to send out a heartfelt thank you to all of the space streamers for sharing their passion for exploration online, also to the moderators that are keeping those communities welcoming and kind and all of the amazing Twitch staff and volunteers who made that convention possible.

Like NASA, Twitch has been facing many rounds of layoffs in recent years, and it's the people behind the scenes, the engineers, producers, and support teams that really keep those communities thriving. To everyone I met at TwitchCon, thank you for reminding me why sharing what we love with the world is so important. A few weeks after TwitchCon, major news broke out in US space policy. Billionaire entrepreneur and commercial space traveler, Jared Isaacman, was renominated as NASA administrator. He's flown to orbit twice with SpaceX commanding both the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions. You may remember that his initial nomination was withdrawn earlier this year.

It was the first time in history that a NASA administrator nominee had been pulled and now a new first. He's been renominated for the role. It's been an unusual process, one that we've been following for months here on Planetary Radio. Isaacman's commercial approach to leadership has sparked a wide range of reactions across the space community, from optimism about innovation and efficiency to concern that such a vision could reshape NASA's scientific priorities. To help us make sense of what this could mean for NASA's future, I spoke with Jack Kiraly, The Planetary Society's director of government relations. Hey, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So last time we spoke on the show, we were talking about this potentiality that Jared Isaacman might be renominated for NASA administrator and now it's actually happened. So what do you think this choice might mean for the agency?

Jack Kiraly: Well, it goes to show that nothing happens until it all happens at the same time. I think it was maybe a few days after we spoke about it that Jared Isaacman was renominated, and I think what it means for the agency is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I think the agency has been facing a lot of uncertainty, a lot of political instability, and though people like Janet Petro, who served as acting administrator for the first half of 2025 and Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has been serving as acting administrator since early July, they've tried to provide some stability, I think, to varying degrees of success depending on who you ask.

Secretary Duffy more recently has gotten more involved in the policymaking side of the NASA administrator job, but there's only so much that an acting person can do, especially as it relates to engaging with Congress because you're only there for as long as the president says you can serve in that acting capacity. As we saw, this is the first time that an acting administrator, Janet Petro, was taken off the position and being replaced by Secretary Duffy. And so having a Senate-confirmed leader, whether that confirmation happens before the end of the calendar year or first part of next year, is going to be really significant because it provides a level of political stability, let alone a policy direction that the agency could go down.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Speaking of policy direction though, I know there was recent reporting in Politico about Jared Isaacman's Project Athena, basically his vision for reshaping NASA in a more commercial sense. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that might affect the agency if he is actually confirmed?

Jack Kiraly: Absolutely. So full disclosure, I have read Project Athena, cover to cover, all 60-something pages of it. The document is very clearly written for a different period of time. And what I mean by that is that it's dated for May of this year of 2025. And in May of 2025, if we can go back in our internal time machines and remember that was when the Office of Management and Budget had just put out the official top line, that skinny budget. I think May 2nd was the date that the skinny budget had come out after months of speculation, rumors and leaks indicating that major changes were underway at the OMB for NASA's budget, right? This is where we learned about the 47% cut to Science Mission Directorate, major changes to the Artemis program, the elimination of the Gateway project. So there was all of the speculation finally being confirmed by documentation coming out of OMB.

And Jared, at the time, still just nominee for NASA administrator, was trying to reconcile the vision that he has for a more ambitious, streamlined, efficient agency, reconciling that with budget cuts that were thought to be inevitable. Congress hadn't formally pushed back on any of it, and large part because the appropriations process didn't really get started quite yet because that gets kicked off by the president's budget request coming out. And so this is a document that was built out of a period of uncertainty of, "Well, if I have less money as administrator, how do I still accomplish those Title 51 requirements, those legal requirements for the agency to do all these things?" And so Project Athena is really not so much a policy manifesto as just a snapshot in time of what Jared's personal ambition is for the agency and how he would've tried to achieve those things under a more constrained budget environment.

Since it's come out, since the president's budget came out and since Project Athena was written, Congress has resoundingly rejected the president's budget request. In such a unexpected... Maybe not so much unexpected. Congress is always very supportive of the space program, but in such a stark rebuke of the president's budget... really OMB's budget. I don't think the president really would be interested in the things that the budget tried to do, like surrendering solar system exploration for a generation. But in that context, in that May 2025 mindset, Jared was looking at where in the process... The document itself is series of bullet points mostly asking, I think, earnest questions about how do we do what NASA does better? How do we get more out of it? How do we find cost savings? Where are there areas? So I know one of the things that has been talked about a lot, has been the science as a service model. I think that's the phrasing that's come out of that document.

And that really only pertained to a small portion of the Earth Science Division. Instead of building a new spacecraft to collect a specific set of data, if that data is commercially available, is it better for the government to buy it from commercial vendors as it has already been trying to do? I think that that's part of, I think, maybe where some of the consternation doesn't make sense, is NASA's already trying to do a lot of these things. So you have SIMPLEx, the Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration. That is a project where they're trying to use more commercial off-the-shelf components to make smaller, more cost-efficient or less costly planetary science missions. Has not necessarily panned out, right? There's been four attempts at launching those, and all four have failed, with the fifth one coming up with the ESCAPADE launch, maybe as this show is airing.

But it's a gamble that the agency has been working towards of, where can we commercialize things? So it's not wholly unaligned with where NASA's already moving for certain elements of the science program. Where I think Project Athena runs into some roadblocks is that it doesn't necessarily get what that value of science is. It's not like you can go to the store and say, "I would like three sciences, please." Science is a process, and fundamental science where there's no end state, there's no end product that gets you that. You're asking these open-ended questions and you're developing a question, you're developing a hypothesis, you're developing methodology to determine, "Okay, I need data at this resolution of this specificity, this much of it to answer this fundamental question about our universe." There's not really a commercial case for that. Parts of it can be commercialized. You can go and buy commercial off-the-shelf components or buy standardized satellite buses from any of the number of providers that do that, but the fundamental goal of the mission has no commercial incentive, and that's why the government does it. That's why our tax dollars go to that, is that this is something that has long-ranging implications, not only for our understanding of the universe, but in the development of novel technology that leads to breakthroughs in commercial technology.

Our lives get better every day because we're searching for these answers in the deepest, darkest holes across the solar system. Finding the origin or maybe potential origins of a second genesis of life in the solar system has no commercial application, but all the tools that you need to get to that point improves life here on earth. It's the symbiotic relationship we have with fundamental science.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Jared is clearly coming at this from a commercial perspective. This has been his background and it's the reason why he was nominated. I was a little concerned by some of the commentary about the different NASA facilities. What does JPL even do? Well, a lot, it turns out.

Jack Kiraly: I would say, I think the questions asked in the document are earnest. I don't think they're coming from a place of malice of asking what facilities at Goddard can be relocated to Johnson Space Center or that are duplicative of things already happening at Johnson Space Center, which is honestly a question that's posed in this document. I don't know if it was Jared's intent to say I don't think that Goddard should exist. I think that there is a tenuous line right between those two modes of thinking.

I think Jared is someone who has come out time and time again, and talked about the unique things that NASA does. And obviously I think we focus a lot on launch because it's the big fireworks show right at the beginning of a mission, maybe more designating a notable halfway point between the development and operation of a mission. But focusing just on launches only gets part of that picture of what NASA does. And looking at all of these unique programs that it runs: rovers on Mars, space telescopes, earth-orbiting satellites or planetary body-orbiting satellites that collect data sets dating back many years. When you look at the Landsat program that has been operated by NASA, I think we're on Landsat 9, this is a continuous data set of the earth environment since 1976.

That's a huge benefit, and that's publicly available information. There are things that NASA does that lay the foundation for other industries that no single actor can replace. And I think Jared understands that, though, again, I think he's coming at it with the right intent of having a stronger space program that's focused on those unique things. He's coming at it from that business CEO mindset. And I think government does not necessarily operate very well with just that mindset, but I also think he's maybe surrounding himself with people that have those varied perspectives that he's not coming in there to say, "I'm the only person capable of changing things and here's how I'm going to do it." Government is a consensus-based process. You have to work with Congress, you have to work with your other nominees and designees of the other agencies. It's a collaborative experience, and so he's coming in with a good intent, he's coming in with fresh ideas and hopefully a willingness to learn about how government works and how you can make the government effective at doing these things.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What do you think is the timeline potentially for his confirmation?

Jack Kiraly: We're not really expecting a timeline. This has never happened before. [inaudible 00:50:00].

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. And we're in a government shutdown right now.

Jack Kiraly: And we're in a government shutdown. Maybe over by the end of this week, but I think we're all trying to read the same tea leaves in things coming out of the House of Representatives right now, who have been out of sessions since mid-September, and so there's a process that we have to go through. So he was nominated the first time at the beginning of this year. I think formally nominated at the beginning of this year. I think the president during the transition, I think the date was December 4th of 2024, was when the president indicated at the earliest time in any presidential administration that had selected their NASA administrator nominee.

So Jared's nomination then formally was submitted to the Senate in January of this year. We then waited until early April for the confirmation hearing. In terms of going forward, the US Senate has 20 legislative days left of 2025. That's calendar days that have been indicated as session days. That's when activities of the US Senate can take place. I will say it has been submitted as a separate nomination, which typically is going to mean there is going to have to be a confirmation hearing, and then that confirmation hearing is going to follow by a vote by the committee, which any nominee doesn't have to pass out of the committee. You want to have the support of the Committee of Jurisdiction that oversees your position and then goes to a full vote of the Senate.

So on the timeline that we're on right now, we're looking at... 20 legislative days is not enough, plus they have to finish the appropriations process for FY '26. There's just so much on their plate right now. I could see a situation which they try to expedite this and we could see maybe a confirmation vote before the end of the year, but they'd have to put off a lot of the other work that they're doing as it relates to, say, NASA's budget, which is also vitally important. And I think Congress really wants to have their say on this. They've been very intentional about supporting NASA. So that's a long way of saying I don't know what the possible outcome might be in this situation. It could be a while.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's been a busy season for space news, but this week also marks a really special milestone for us here at The Planetary Society. November 17th is the third anniversary of the end of our LightSail mission, our crowdfunded solar sailing spacecraft. Even though its journey ended, when it re-entered earth's atmosphere, its legacy lives on, and as I found out at TwitchCon, not only is it inspiring scientists and engineers, but streamers like Moohoodles. To celebrate the achievement, here's What's Up with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist and the program manager for LightSail 2. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So I got to hang out with Moohoodles at TwitchCon, and during the panel, she told me that she joined The Planetary Society because of LightSail.

Bruce Betts: Oh, very cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I know. We're coming up on the three-year anniversary of the end of the mission. So I don't know, it's always a special thing for us whenever we mark these anniversaries for our spacecraft, but also really cool to meet more people that joined because of it. And you got to be program manager, so you saw the whole arc of that program.

Bruce Betts: Yes, it was quite the program and I was in at the beginning or near the beginning and very, very, very involved in the last few years with LightSail 2 as the program manager and also the picture guy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And the picture guy. Well, we shared one of those pictures at TwitchCon in the panel, so people got to see it on the big screen. As a nerd, it's super fun to be able to be a panelist in the convention center that I've been to so many conventions for. And while I was there, Moohoodles wasn't the only person that told me they joined on because of LightSail, and I know 50,000 donors and members around the world were a part of this. What was it like seeing that level of public engagement in something that you were working on?

Bruce Betts: Oh, it was great. It was wonderful. As you say, we had over 50,000 donors, including mostly our members, but also others. It was all funded by individuals, the entire LightSail program. And we had some public events, but then we had a lot of things that, of course, we were putting out videos, we were putting out written things, which I was writing a lot later on, on some of the technical sides.

And the responses we get, people were just very enthusiastic. Something about a big, shiny weird thing being pushed only by the force of light that most of us don't even realize exists is pretty cool. It's really hard to do, but it's pretty cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, RIP LightSail. I'm really glad we got to do that. But just because we didn't come up with LightSail 3, doesn't mean that we're not still working on it. We still have our STEP grant program, which also people ask me about at TwitchCon.

Bruce Betts: Oh, good.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And I understand we're asking for proposals sometime soon, right?

Bruce Betts: Yes, yes, within the next couple weeks. I won't give a specific date because it's super secret. No, I just want to make sure everything should be lined up, but in the next couple of weeks. And we'll mention it on Planetary Radio, you've got a couple months if you are interested in proposing. Again, it's for any proposal in science and technology related to planets related to one of our three core enterprises: find life, and explore planets, and defend the earth regarding asteroid threat.

And there's all sorts of information, but it's really serious people proposing to have backgrounds in this stuff, and we've gotten some nice projects. So we've always done science and technology projects, but we've done more in recent years and then we created this. I wanted to create a program that was a little less ad hoc, a little less who we happen to meet so that we can do that too if there's an amazing opportunity.

But we can take and do a real proposal review and find the best things that use our member and donor money most effectively to advance science and technology and get the public excited about it. That again, was a great thing about LightSail was it was just inherently, as shown by the number of people we had involved and by the press, people were interested and excited and we were putting out information for them. So it was cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And every year on the anniversary of the mission burning up in the atmosphere, I wear my LightSail necklace and toast to our spacecraft.

Bruce Betts: Cool. You should do it for our launch too, or more significantly, when we first deployed the sail successfully. That was the real challenge. And then flying it successfully was a long and arduous and rewarding process as we successfully demonstrated what we set out to, which was to demonstrate controlled solar sailing in a small spacecraft, since this was the size of a loaf of bread when it launched, unfurled to about the size of a boxing ring of silver Mylar and did controlled solar sailing.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, we succeeded. We proved the technology. And I say we as if I was a part of the team at the time. But long before The Planetary Society did this, I remember reading about solar sails as a kid and being so inspired by the idea. I actually wrote an article about light sail before I ever joined The Planetary Society because I loved the project so much.

Bruce Betts: Wow. That's pretty cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm pretty inspired by the fact that our team accomplished this and all of the other cool sci-tech projects that we're helping launch now. It makes me feel like we're doing a lot of good to help people launch these really cool ideas that need that funding.

Bruce Betts: We are, and all along, we've tried to fill niches that aren't being filled by funding or that need a little bit more or need to get from one step to the next. So that was our biggest project scale ever. What solar sailing was, was trying to kick it to that next level so that others with deeper pockets, meaning agencies and the like, can pursue it. But we've been told by people at agency, it's a lot easier to sell things once you can point to something and say, "Hey, that worked." And even though in theory it would work, having a demonstration is rather powerful.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, yeah. No, we're going to make it into the history book someday when one of those little light sails or solar sails makes it out somewhere into the far solar system, or who knows, maybe beyond. That's way in the future, but one can dream.

Bruce Betts: Shall we move on to a related random space fact rewind? The LightSail spacecraft, we just talked about that. After three and a half years, 18,000 orbits of the earth and about 800 million kilometers or 500 million miles, that's when it burned up. So it went a long ways. And the new part is I should have, but I didn't realize before, it basically went the distance around the earth as the distance from the sun or earth to Jupiter.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Whoa, that's really far.

Bruce Betts: Yeah. Yeah. It takes a heck of a lot bigger rocket energy efficiency in your solar sail, things like that to actually go there because that whole pesky gravity thing, but it went a long ways and a lot of orbits.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Go LightSail.

Bruce Betts: Go LightSail. All right, everybody, go out there and look up at the night sky and think about what that thing flying over your head is. If it's blinking lights, it's not a satellite. But it could be aliens, but it's not. Thank you and good night.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love this show, you can get Planetary Radio T-shirts at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review and a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, you can leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space and our member community app.

Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, as made possible by our amazing members from all over the world. You can join us at planetary.org/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreier is the host of our monthly Space Policy Edition, and Mat Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio, and until next week, ad astra.