Dr. Heather Kaluna talks about space weathering, which changes the surfaces of the moon, asteroids, and Mercury. She studies space weathering in a laboratory, where she can reproduce hundreds of millions of years of weathering in just forty minutes.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the biggest astronomy project in the world right now. It’s an amazingly complex robot, and some of its sensors need to be kept cool. Dr Kris Stone talks about the cooling system, and how it will be tested during the longest continuous test ever conducted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Dr. Lauren White talks about designing and building instruments for the International Space Station (ISS). She shares a secret about designing instruments for the outside of the space station, and also talks about being the first American to command a laser on the ISS.

Dr Morgan Cable comes back on the podcast to tell us about how she and a team of scientists searched a fresh lava field in Iceland to look for signs of life. They pretended to see the landscape like a rover would, so that the lessons they learned in Icela

Dr. James "Gerbs" Bauer talks about comets, the icy dirtballs (or dirty iceballs) that orbit the Sun. We talk about the ancient Egyptian term for comets, why you probably shouldn't eat a comet, and an exciting new discovery made by the NEOWISE team.