On Episode 107 of This Week In Space, Rod and Tariq speak with journalist Leonard David about NASA’s troubled Mars pattern return mission.
The robotic program has its roots within the Sixties, when NASA began serious about sending robots to fetch Mars soil even earlier than Mariner 4’s first flyby of the planet. The Russians contemplated it as properly, because the Chinese language and Japanese are as we speak. The issue? It is actually onerous, with a number of spacecraft, probably on totally different launches, rendezvousing across the Purple Planet to perform.
After which there are the issues in regards to the security of returning attainable pathogens to Earth. However the showstopper, as standard, is value — and NASA’s not pleased. We invited the unique Area Ace reporter, Leonard David, to affix the dialogue.
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Area information of the week
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About This Week In Area
This Week in Space covers the brand new house age. Each Friday we take a deep dive into a captivating matter. What’s taking place with the brand new race to the moon and different planets? When will SpaceX actually ship individuals to Mars?
Be part of Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Area.com as they sort out these questions and extra every week on Friday afternoons. You possibly can subscribe as we speak in your favourite podcatcher.
Rod Pyle is an creator, journalist, tv producer and Editor-in-Chief of Ad Astra magazine. He has written 18 books on house historical past, exploration, and growth, together with Area 2.0, Innovation the NASA Approach, Interplanetary Robots, Blueprint for a Battlestar, Superb Tales of the Area Age, First On the Moon, and Vacation spot Mars
In a earlier life, Rod produced quite a few documentaries and quick movies for The Historical past Channel, Discovery Communications, and Disney. He additionally labored in visible results on Star Trek: Deep Area 9 and the Battlestar Galactica reboot, in addition to varied sci-fi TV pilots. His most up-to-date TV credit score was with the NatGeo documentary on Tom Wolfe’s iconic e-book The Proper Stuff.
Liable for Area.com’s editorial imaginative and prescient, Tariq Malik has been the Editor-in-Chief of Area.com since 2019 and has coated house information and science for 18 years. He joined the Area.com staff in 2001, first as an intern and shortly after as a full-time spaceflight reporter masking human spaceflight, exploration, astronomy and the evening sky. He grew to become Area.com’s managing editor in 2009. As on-air expertise has offered house tales on CNN, Fox Information, NPR and others.
Tariq is an Eagle Scout (sure, he earned the Area Exploration benefit badge), a Area Camp veteran (4 occasions as a child, as soon as as an grownup), and has taken the last word “vomit comet” trip whereas reporting on zero-gravity fires. Earlier than becoming a member of Area.com, he served as a employees reporter for The Los Angeles Instances masking metropolis and training beats. He has journalism levels from the College of Southern California and New York College.