Our universe is a wild and wonderful place. Join NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers on a new adventure each week — all you need is your curiosity. First-time space explorers welcome.
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Curious Universe Live: Art and Science with Astronaut Matthew Dominick
NASA has a long history of bringing together science, engineering and art. Space exploration is a human endeavor—one that requires creativity. In this special live episode, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick and comedian and musician Reggie Watts talk flow states, aircraft ejector seats and more. Plus, a new NASA tool that lets you make music from iconic Hubble Space Telescope imagery.
Inside the Team That Keeps Hubble Flying
When it launched in 1990, NASA expected the Hubble Space Telescope to last for about 15 years. Thirty-five years later, Hubble is still showing us the universe as no other telescope can. Go behind the scenes with Morgan Van Arsdall, deputy operations manager for Hubble, on an audio tour of Hubble’s control center. Morgan’s team keeps Hubble operating smoothly, and when something goes wrong, they snap into action to fix it. Plus, hear how Hubble tag-teams with newer observatories—including the James Webb Space Telescope—and continues to push the frontiers of astronomy.
How NASA Found the Ingredients For Life on an Asteroid
How did life begin? It’s one of science’s biggest questions, but it’s impossible to answer on Earth, where ancient clues have been buried by the planet’s shifting surface. Instead, scientists are looking beyond our own planet, to asteroids like Bennu, a distant fragment of a lost world. In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample of Bennu’s surface and brought it back to Earth. Ever since, scientists have been hard at work studying the fragments of asteroid Bennu. Now, they’re ready to reveal the results—our best look yet at a time capsule from the early solar system that once fostered the ingredients for life.
Why the Moon’s Icy South Pole is a Hot Target for NASA
The Moon’s South Pole is a bizarre landscape. Mountain ridges glow in perpetual sunlight while deep craters freeze in billion-year-old shade. Yet hidden in the depths of those shadowed craters, under temperatures almost three times colder than the frostiest day in Antarctica, lurks something familiar–water ice. In the future, that ice could sustain human explorers or be broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen to refuel rockets. Join Brett Denevi, Artemis III geology team lead, to learn why NASA plans to land astronauts on the Moon’s South Pole later this decade. Then with Michelle Munk, NASA space technology chief architect, meet the robot Moon landers scouting ahead of Artemis which will drill beneath the regolith and test technologies designed to help future human explorers survive the Pole’s extreme conditions.
The Mind-Bending Math Inside Black Holes
Black holes are mysterious, far away, and can bend the fabric of reality itself—but we're learning more about them all the time. Ronald Gamble, a NASA theoretical astrophysicist, uses math, computer coding, and a dash of creativity to peer inside some of the universe's most extreme objects. We'll explore what it would feel like to get pulled into a black hole and what people get wrong about black holes. And we'll answer questions from curious listeners, including, "What would happen if a black hole ate nothing but magnetized material?"
How Open Science and AI Are Advancing Hurricane Research
As climate change drives more frequent and intense tropical cyclones and hurricanes, coastal communities desperately need better tools to predict how bad storms will be and when and where they’ll strike—and to assess the damage afterward. From the air and in space, NASA and NOAA collect critical data as storms roll in. But what happens next? Fly directly into the eye of the storm with daring hurricane hunter pilots, meet meteorologists and data scientists building AI models to improve hurricane prediction, and join the disaster response experts helping cities pinpoint their hardest-hit neighborhoods. Plus, learn how NASA is making data open to everyone—including you, with Transform to Open Science.
Europa Clipper's Voyage to Jupiter's Ocean Moon
As NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft leaves Earth, it carries a message: we, too, are made of water. Europa—one of Jupiter’s moons—is a top candidate to support life, thanks to its ocean of liquid, salty water capped by a layer of ice. Lynnae Quick-Henderson, a planetary scientist at NASA, explains how Clipper will search Europa for the building blocks of life. The mission is also a message in a bottle, bringing a greeting from one ocean world to another. Hear how Ada Limón, the Poet Laureate of the United States, used NASA’s mission as inspiration for her poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” and why she thinks everyone—even space nerds—should step back and appreciate our connections to the universe and each other.
An Asteroid by Any Other Name With Special Guest Latif Nasser
The idea of an asteroid from outer space crashing into Earth has captured the imaginations of science fiction directors for decades. But here at NASA, we take potentially hazardous near-Earth objects seriously. We have a planetary defense office that plans for every scenario—we’ve even practiced nudging an asteroid off course with spacecraft. But there are tens of thousands of objects in near-Earth space, and the first step in protecting against potential impacts is spotting, tracking and managing every single one of them. Learn how NASA does just that from Joe Masiero, a scientist on the asteroid survey mission NEOWISE. Then, join friend of the show Latif Nasser, co-host of the podcast Radiolab, to untangle the mystery of a strange space rock that’s not quite a moon but not quite a normal asteroid, either.
Sun Series: Bonus: Dispatches from the Path of Totality
On April 8, 2024, North America experienced its last total solar eclipse until the 2040s. As the Moon’s shadow fell across the U.S., NASA sent Curious Universe producers out into the field across the path of totality to talk to space nerds and eclipse scientists. In this special bonus episode of our Sun Series, we’ll relive the special day together.
Sun Series: Soaring Toward the Sun
For the first time, a NASA spacecraft is flying through the Sun's atmosphere. Nour Raouafi, project scientist for Parker Solar Probe, explains why the Sun's corona is the source of one of the biggest mysteries in all of space science. So, what does it take to build a probe that can touch the Sun—including surviving temperatures of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit and barreling through sudden eruptions of solar plasma—and live to tell the tale? We'll also go inside the fleet of NASA spacecraft studying the Sun from many angles, including the rescue mission to save a wildly spinning observatory before it became lost in space forever.
Sun Series: Space Weather
From Earth, the Sun can seem steady and predictable. But when you look at our star close up, there’s a lot going on. Go behind the scenes with NASA’s Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office, a team monitoring space weather—eruptions of radiation and plasma from the Sun that can wreak havoc on spacecraft and pose dangers to astronauts. We’ll also revisit the most powerful geomagnetic storm on record, an 1859 event that produced northern lights visible in the tropics and made electrical systems go haywire. This is episode fiof the Sun and Eclipse series from NASA’s Curious Universe, an official NASA podcast.
Sun Series: Minisode! Countdown to Total Solar Eclipse 2024
It’s time. On April 8, 2024, millions of people across North America will see a total solar eclipse. Get the most out of totality with this special bonus episode. Listen up for safety tips, learn how to make your own pinhole projector to safely and learn how anyone—including you!—can contribute to NASA research through citizen science. And if you’re not in the path of totality, watch NASA’s live broadcast starting at 1 p.m. EDT. NASA’s Curious Universe is an official NASA podcast. See when the eclipse starts where you are with NASA’s Eclipse Explorer: go.nasa.gov/EclipseExplorer
Sun Series: You (Yes, You!) Can Help NASA Study the Sun
How often do you think about your nearest star? Though it may not seem like it from here on Earth, our trusty Sun is a place of mystery. Take a good look at its influence on our planet – through the otherworldly experience of eclipse, maybe, or the aurora – and you might get "sucked" in... to a citizen science project, that is. Join NASA Sun scientists like Liz Macdonald and volunteers like Hanjie Tan to listen to crickets fooled by the false night of an eclipse, discover new colors in the aurora, and hunt for comets hiding in the plasma of our Sun’s atmosphere. And learn how you can get involved in NASA science while experiencing our nearest star firsthand. This is episode three of the Sun and Eclipse series from NASA’s Curious Universe, an official NASA podcast.
Sun Series: How to Experience a Total Solar Eclipse
On April 8, 2024, the Moon will pass in front of the Sun, casting a shadow across Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Total solar eclipses have fascinated human beings for thousands of years. Watching the Moon eclipse the Sun is a surreal, multi-sensory experience that you’re not likely to forget. But Eclipses also offer unique opportunities for NASA to study the relationship between our star and home planet. Join current and former NASA sun scientists Kelly Korreck, Fred “Mr. Eclipse” Espenak and Cherilynn Morrow on a journey through time and space to solve eclipse mysteries.
Sun Series: The Sun, Our Star
The Sun is our closest star. Billions of years ago, it shaped the formation of our home planet and the beginning of life on Earth. Today, it provides the heat and energy that powers our civilization, but it can also disrupt our technology and spacecraft through explosive outbursts of radiation. Join NASA Sun scientist Joe Westlake on a journey from the surface of Earth to the Sun’s core to learn how intricately we’re connected to our star and the progress we’ve made unraveling its mysteries. This is episode one of the Sun and Eclipse series from NASA's Curious Universe, an official NASA podcast.