Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
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.
Search Planetary Radio
We were there when the Cassini spacecraft ended 13 years of exploration and revelation at Saturn.
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.
Thousands celebrated the 61st anniversary of the first human voyage into space. We’ll take you to the Los Angeles party under the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Astrobiologist and author David Grinspoon shares his thoughts about the search for life, where we might find it and how science works.
New research shows that the giant plumes of Saturn’s moon Enceladus may not be coming from the warm ocean deep below the icy surface.
Flying a spacecraft through geysers spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus might reveal the building blocks of life or even life itself.
Cassini mission project scientist Linda Spilker returns with new science from ocean moon Enceladus and anniversaries to celebrate with the Voyager mission.
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.
Composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg is joined by Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker and retired astronaut Nicole Stott as she shares excerpts from The Moons Symphony.
18 astronauts on the Artemis Team have a shot at walking on the Moon, and Stephanie Wilson is one of them.
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.
A fun conversation with the leader of the Cassini imaging team, and an audio tour of the transit of Mercury with astronomer Jay Pasachoff.
NASA has given the go-ahead for Dragonfly, a flying rotorcraft that will explore Saturn’s mysterious moon Titan. Mission Principal Investigator Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle helps us celebrate.
It has been many months since the great Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere and fiery death. Yet the mission lives on as the reams of data and images reveal much more of this beautiful world, its rings and its moons.
A very special, extended conversation with Johns Hopkins University planetary scientist Sarah Hörst is capped by a tour of her fascinating lab. That’s where Sarah and her team simulate decidedly un-Earthlike atmospheres and more. Emily Lakdawalla has returned from this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference with news from around the solar system. Caffeine! It’s on Saturn’s moon Titan AND in the espresso made on the International Space Station! More about the latter in What’s Up.
magine soaring over what may be the solar system’s most Earth-like world, if you ignore the chill. If funded, the nuclear electric-powered Dragonfly will do exactly this. Principal Investigator Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle shares her enthusiasm.
A computer model based on our best data about Saturn’s cloud-shrouded moon says that torrential liquid methane pounds the surface far more frequently than previously expected. Sean Faulk and Jonathan Mitchell of UCLA explain.
More than 1,100 fans of the just-completed 20-year mission to Saturn joined us for a live tribute.
Join us at JPL and Caltech on the bittersweet morning the Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn.
Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society talks with Gregory Benford, David Brin, Geoffrey Landis and Larry Niven about terraforming Mars, the origin of life, the drive to explore and more.