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Since 2002, Planetary Radio has visited with a scientist, engineer, project manager, advocate, or writer who provides a unique perspective on the quest for knowledge about our solar system and beyond. The full show archive is available for free.
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Would meeting an extraterrestrial civilization be good or bad for humanity? Astronomer Dr. Jacob Haqq Misra argues that knowing the outcome in advance is fundamentally impossible.
A new volunteer SETI science project to search for alien technosignatures has launched! Two of its creators tell you how to sign up.
How will nations react if (when?) humanity detects the presence of an alien intelligence or civilization? That’s the topic Planetary Society Chief Advocate Casey Dreier takes up with his guest, astrophysicist Jason Wright.
Join Mat Kaplan and Planetary Society colleagues in Florida for the first attempt to launch the Space Launch System rocket on a mission to the Moon.
Professor Bethany Ehlmann served on the steering committee for the new planetary science and astrobiology decadal survey that will steer future exploration of the solar system.
Britney Schmidt is preparing us for the day when a submarine will slip into the seas of an ocean world like Europa to search for life.
The Mars 2020 rover has rolled into an ancient river delta on the Red Planet. Will we find evidence of past life there?
The Planetary Society’s new Science and Technology Empowered by the Public (STEP) grant program will let citizens join the search for ET and enable astronomers to discover the nature of hundreds of near-Earth asteroids.
Water may have flowed on Mars for a billion more years than was previously thought, giving possible life an extra billion years to thrive.
Astrobiologist and author David Grinspoon shares his thoughts about the search for life, where we might find it and how science works.
NASA’s Jim Green and Mary Voytek want the science community to develop tools that will help us evaluate potential evidence of life beyond Earth.
The Pentagon has released its assessment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Casey Dreier and science journalist Sarah Scoles talk about what’s behind the renewed interest in UFOs and Sarah’s book, They Are Already Here.
University of Glasgow chemist Lee Cronin believes he and his collaborators have found a way to recognize life as we know it and as we don’t know it.
Astrophysicist Grant Tremblay describes how four proposed space telescopes could reveal our solar system and the universe as never before.
Astronomer Jane Greaves returns with an update on the phosphine gas floating above Venus, before Casey Honnibal takes us through her team’s discovery of water right out under the Sun on Earth’s Moon.
The leader of the OSIRIS REx asteroid sample return mission shares more details of last week’s encounter in an exclusive interview, while we also learn about the proposed mission to look for life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
NASA’s planetary protection officer joined Mat Kaplan’s Humans to Mars summit panel for a great conversation about protecting worlds throughout the solar system from what could be devastating contamination.
It could be a profound and historic discovery made on Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor.
Georgetown University planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson chronicles the long history of our fascination with Mars and the possibility of life there, culminating with Perseverance, the new rover now headed there.
New research reveals why Earth is on its own in this solar system’s habitable zone where liquid surface water flows, but the same isn’t true across the galaxy.