Feature Guest: Bonnie Buratti
The spacecraft Cassini went out in spectacular fashion, travelling through Saturn’s rings for a final death dive into the gas giant. Even in its final heroic moments, Cassini was relaying back data shedding light on the bizarre worlds known as the ring moons of Saturn. The origin of these small bodies, which manage to maintain orbits within the turbulent environment of Saturn’s rings, pose a a puzzle for scientists. Today we’re joined here at The Star Spot by Bonnie Buratti of JPL with updates from her recently published study into this young and dynamic system of oddball worlds.
Current in Space
Dave presents a hole of a breakthrough: The much-anticipated Event Horizon Telescope has at last come online, and has already given us the stunning first-ever image of a black hole. Then Amelia and Samantha explore newly proposed possibilities concerning the habitable zone, the region around a star in which planets could support liquid water on their surfaces. And lastly Tony and Simon offer a back to back analysis of how we might save ourselves from a killer asteroid. Spoiler alert! The movies have it wrong, but we’re not entirely without hope.
About Our Guest
Bonnie Buratti is a planetary astronomer in the Division of Earth and Space Sciences at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she leads the Comets, Asteroids, and Satellites Group. She has worked on the Voyager program, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, the New Horizons space probe and the Rosetta mission. She was awarded the NASA exceptional achievement medal for her contributions to the Cassini mission. In 2014 she was elected Chair of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. She is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
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Episode 184: The Milky Way's First Fast Radio Burst, with Sandro Mereghetti
Episode 183: COVID-19 Meets the NASA Space Apps Challenge, with James Slifierz
Episode 182: Planet Nine or Black Hole One, with Jakub Scholtz
Episode 181: Reports of Betelgeuse’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, with Emily Levesque
Episode 180: Wormholes through Space and Time, with John Cramer
Episode 179: Dreams of Floating Cities, with Geoffrey Landis
Episode 178 Sibling Rivalry at the Centre of the Galaxy, with Smadar Naoz
Episode 177: The Case of the Missing Dark Matter, with Guo Chi
Episode 176: Second Genesis, with Jay Melosh
Episode 175: The Truth is Out There (at the University of Manitoba)
Episode 174: Fuzzy Dark Matter, with Lachlan Lancaster
Episode 173: Discovering an Ancient Oasis, with William Rapin
Episode 172: The Hubble Not-So Constant
Episode 171: Ploonets: When Moons Go Rogue, with Jorge Zuluaga
Episode 170: The Mystery of Fast Radio Bursts, with Vikram Ravi
Episode 169: Science at the Limits (Part 2)
Episode 168: Celebrating Apollo + Science at the Limits (Part 1)
Episode 167: Current in Space + The Best of The Star Spot: Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt
Episode 166: Nanodiamonds are Forever, with Jane Greaves
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