Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage
by Andrew Prestage
It's cosmology in a cup! - Cosmic Coffee Time is bite sized podcasts making sense of space, astronomy, life, and the universe, best enjoyed with a coffee. A down to earth look at what's up there, and it's just for you spacefans. Grab a coffee and see where in the universe we go this time. Follow on Twitter @CosmicCoffTime
Episodes
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#98 Exoplanets: The alien worlds that orbit the stars, from Super-Earths and Hot Jupiters to Lava Planets and why they’re so different to the planets in our solar system
Send us Fan Mail Beyond our Solar System there’s an incredible variety of alien worlds, many unlike anything we see in our own planetary neighbourhood. From rocky Super-Earths and Mini-Neptunes to enormous Hot Jupiters, molten lava planets and rogue worlds drifting through space without a star,...
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#97 Nancy Grace Roman: The new space telescope beginning a remarkable journey to map the universe, hunt for exoplanets and unravel cosmic mysteries
Send us Fan Mail NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, opening a new chapter in our exploration of the universe. We discover who Nancy Grace Roman was, and the remarkable career that led her to become one of NASA’s most influential astronomers. We follow Roman’s spectacular...
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#96 The James Webb Space Telescope: The world’s most powerful space telescope, with a 6.5-metre mirror and infrared instruments in a distant orbit. Discover how this remarkable observatory could transform our view of the universe.
Send us Fan Mail The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space telescope ever built, designed to look deeper into the universe and further back in time than ever before. Let's check out the technology behind Webb, from its enormous 6.5-metre mirror and infrared vision to its...
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#95 Of the enormous number of things that happen in the universe, a few of them throw up some really interesting coincidences. Let’s take a look at some of these.
Send us Fan Mail There are a few really interesting coincidences in space science. From Earth, the sun and moon appear the same size, that’s super unlikely. Earth seems to made for us, well, if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here have the discussion I guess. And our lifetimes overlap with the Apollo...
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#94 The Artemis III crew has been selected. Who are they, what are their skills, and what will they do on the next Artemis flight?
Send us Fan Mail NASA has announced the four astronauts who will fly Artemis III, the first crew assigned to test the lunar landing hardware in Earth orbit. They’ll test the rendezvous, docking and spacecraft systems that future lunar landings will depend on. In this episode, we take a closer…
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#93 What can we do to stop another dinosaur extinction asteroid smashing into Earth?
Send us Fan Mail 66 million years ago, an asteroid smashed into Earth and caused a mass extinction, including nearly all of the dinosaurs. What would we do if another extinction level asteroid was heading to Earth? The good news is we’re monitoring the skies to identify them early. And there are...
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#92 Particle physicist and author Dr. Sarah Alam Malik joins us to explore the history of astronomy and the universe. Her new book A Brief History of the Universe takes us from ancient astronomers to modern physics, and the future of the cosmos.
Send us Fan Mail Particle physicist and author Dr. Sarah Alam Malik stops by for an expansive conversation about astronomy, the history of scientific discovery, and our endless fascination with the night sky. In her new book, A Brief History of the Universe, And Our Place in It, Dr. Sarah…
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#91 What’s next for the Artemis program? Artemis 2 was incredible, but let’s take a look at what Artemis 3 & 4 will achieve in the next couple of years. (It’s amazing!)
Send us Fan Mail Artemis 2 was was a breathtaking moment for us all. We were mesmerised by the four astronauts and the images they sent back to Earth. But so much lies ahead, and that’s the really exciting part. Artemis 3 will orbit the Earth and try out some of the equipment and manoeuvres that…
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#90 An Australian backyard astronomer helped NASA find 100 planets! Astronomy award winner Chris Stockdale used his home observatory in Churchill, Victoria to track distant stars and find the planets in their orbit. What a chat.
Send us Fan Mail Chris Stockdale is an award winning astronomer in the Gippsland area of Australia. His contribution to NASA's exoplanet research earned him the Berenice and Arthur Page Medal from the Astronomical Society of Australia. And he's an amateur. Chris uses an observatory in his own...
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#89 Rogue planets! It's possible that most planets in our galaxy don't orbit a star, like we do with our sun. Rogue planets float through interstellar space in the cold darkness. How do they form? And how do we find a planet at interstellar distances?
Send us Fan Mail We instinctively think of planets as rocky or gaseous bodies orbiting a star like our sun, with sunrise, sunset, heating and maybe even seasons. But what if a planet didn't orbit a light source? What if it just floated through space vaguely orbiting the centre of the galaxy, but...
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#88 Is the Universe Infinite? It’s almost an instinctive question, but maybe it’s unknowable.
Send us Fan Mail Most people have looked to the skies and wondered if the universe has a boundary, or maybe it goes on for ever. The universe might be finite, with and end somewhere. Or, it might be infinite, with an infinite amount of space and matter. Both of thos throw up some mind bending...
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#87 The next crewed Moon mission is ready for launch. Let’s preview the historic Artemis II flight, sending humans to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.
Send us Fan Mail The launch window for Artemis II opens on 6 February 2026. Humans will fly a test mission, swinging around the far side of the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. There won’t be a landing, but just like Apollo 8 tested systems in the lunar vicinity before Apollo 11,...
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#86 We all love the Moon, but it hasn’t always been there. Where did it come from, and when did that happen?
Send us Fan Mail The Moon has a history longer than any of the features on Earth, but it isn’t as old as Earth. The Giant Impact hypothesis says that a Mars sized protoplanet collided with earth Billions of years ago and threw out enough of earth’s mantle to make the Moon. It’s an incredible…
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#85 Skywatch December 2025. Geminid Meteor Shower, Supermoon vs. Pleiades and Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS
Send us Fan Mail As the year winds down, let’s take a look at what the night sky has on offer in December 2025. The highlight has to be the Geminid Meteor Shower. Over a couple of nights this month, Earth crashes through the debris trail of asteroid 3200 Phaethon, producing a spectacular meteor...
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#84 Before exoplanets comes a protoplanetary disc, we’ve found heavy water in one of these. What does this mean for the history of planetary water?
Send us Fan Mail We’ve detected many exoplanets and exoplanetary stems, they orbit stars in other parts of the galaxy. These planets form the same way our planetary did, they coalesce from a protoplanetary disc of gas and dust. Scientists have recently found a useful kind of substance - heavy…
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#83 Two black holes collided a billion light years away, we detected it on Earth just this year, and it was the biggest ever recorded.
Send us Fan Mail A billion light years away, a billion years ago, two black holes spiralled toward each other and collided, we detected its gravitational waves in January 2025. We’ve detected many of these before, but this one was different. It was such a strong, clear signal that we could test...
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#82 Apollo-Soyuz at 50! It’s been a half century since this incredible project. The first international space mission.
Send us Fan Mail In 1975, an incredible and unlikely partnership resulted in the docking of a NASA Apollo capsule and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit. The cold war opponents worked together to overcome not only engineering challenges, but the rivalry and suspicion of the cold war. This...
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#81 After centuries of Earth’s rotation slowing down, it’s now speeding up and making the days shorter. But you’d never notice.
Send us Fan Mail Earth’s days had been getting longer since observations began. Every century, the length of the day would increase by about two milliseconds. Like… clockwork. In recent years, something strange has been happening, the days have started getting shorter as the rotation of the Earth...
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#80 Plants on the Moon. An Australian team of biologists and engineers are really sending a mini greenhouse to the Moon.
Send us Fan Mail An Australian team of botanists and engineers are working on a project that might make or break the future of long term, long distance space occupation. They're growing plants. Not that unusual, but they're trying to grow them on the Moon. Plants produce oxygen and they are food,...
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#79 Launched in 1972 for Venus, Kosmos 482 failed to escape Earth orbit — and finally returned in May 2025, after 53 years in space
Send us Fan Mail Kosmos 482, was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1972 on a mission to Venus, but a technical glitch meant it never made it past Earth orbit. Designed to withstand the hellish surface of Venus, its lander remained in space for over 50 years, but this relic of Cold War space...
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#78 The Andromeda Galaxy is a cosmic neighbour that’s going to collide with our Milky Way Galaxy. Should we panic?
Send us Fan Mail No need to panic. Yet! We’ll be fine for the next 4 or 5 billion years, but Andromeda is heading our way. The Andromeda Galaxy was the first object to be identified as being outside our own galaxy, and it introduced us to extragalactic astronomy. And that’s not all. It can teach…
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#77 The stranded astronauts are finally home after 9 months in space. Let’s see how Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore got home
Send us Fan Mail Their planned 8 day visit to the International Space Station was turned on its head when NASA announced their Boeing Starliner capsule was unsafe to use. What did Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore do for those 9 months? And we check out the plan that was put together to get them…
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#76 The Apollo program was the high point of the space age. From test flights, to lunar landings and the moon buggies
Send us Fan Mail After everything learned through Mercury and Gemini culminated in the seventeen Apollo missions. The first ten were all testing and rehearsals, but the whole program, and a whole era was characterised by Apollo 11, the first time humans set foot on the moon. Along with the…
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#75 NASA's Project Gemini was a spectacular program that bridged the gap from Project Mercury to Apollo. Gemini developed the incredible technology and techniques needed for the lunar program
Send us Fan Mail Nasa had accomplished spaceflight with Project Mercury but the gap to Apollo was still huge. How do you dock two spacecraft in flight and how do crews live in a tiny spacecraft for lunar length flights. These are just a couple of the questions that NASA needed to answer. Gemini…
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#74 At the beginning of the space race, Project Mercury was NASA’s first human crewed spaceflight program, and it was a significant step on the road to the moon. Let’s dive into the vault and check it out.
Send us Fan Mail Back in the late 1950s, NASA was formed. Its first job was to put together a human crewed spaceflight program and put an astronaut into orbit - safely. This was Project Mercury. There were some uncrewed developmental flights and then six crewed flights between 1961 and 1963, this...
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#73 NASA’s Project Mercury Monument has turned 60! It’s a tribute to America's first attempt at human space flight. The monument has a time capsule that is scheduled to stay sealed for 500 years! Let’s check out what's inside.
Send us Fan Mail Project Mercury was NASA’s first attempt at human crewed space flight. It sent Alan Shepard into space, and John Glenn into orbit, among four other landmark flights over 5 years. By 1963 it was done, and NASA was ready to launch Gemini, its next project. But being such a...
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#72 The space pioneers from Earth weren’t humans, what? That’s right, long before humans launched into space, there were a whole team of dogs, monkeys, chimps, insects and more, who rode rockets to space. All in the name of research.
Send us Fan Mail When Yuri Gagarin blasted into orbit in 1961 to become the first human in space, he was already 14 years behind the first animals from Earth. The fruit flies that were flew to space in 1947 were just the first of many different animals in the decade and a half before Gagarin’s...
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#71 Earth has a new moon! For about the next 8 weeks... Asteroid 2024 PT5 will be captured by Earth's gravity before returning to its normal solar orbit.
Send us Fan Mail Earth has a new moon! well, for about 8 weeks anyway. Asteroid 2024 PT5 has been captured by Earth’s gravity and will be in orbit until late November 2024. This is really unusual and there have only been a few confirmed mini moons in the past. Our new temporary neighbour is only...
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#70 The Boeing Starliner capsule's first crewed test flight has left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. What went wrong, and how are they going to get home?
Send us Fan Mail Boeing’s Starliner space capsule blasted off for its first crewed test flight in early June. Great news right? Turns out, no. After arriving at the International Space Station, some technical problems meant that it couldn’t be used to take its crew of Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and…
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#69 NASA's Curiosity rover has just made the most incredible discovery of its 12 years on Mars. By running over a rock!
Send us Fan Mail NASA's Curiosity rover touched down on Mars in August 2012, and it's been exploring the Red Planet all that time. There have been some amazing discoveries and it's travelled over 30km but it has just made the most scientifically significant discovery of its 12 year career, and…
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#68 A piece of space history was written this month, a sample from the far side of the moon! Let's check out the Chang'e 6 lunar lander and it's history-making mission.
Send us Fan Mail As I write this, just a couple of days have passed since the Chang'e 6 sample return capsule touched down with its historic payload. The first sample of rock and soil from the far side of the moon touched down on Earth. This has the potential to unlock some of the secrets from…
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#67 OSIRIS-REx NASA mission scientist Greg Brennecka brings us up to date on the incredible early findings from the Bennu asteroid sample.
Send us Fan Mail In September 2023, Greg Brennecka stopped by to preview the return to Earth of the OSIRI-REx asteroid Bennu sample return capsule. The sample landed safely and the mission scientists like Greg Brennecka have started their analysis. Some of our toughest questions are being…
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#66 Saturn’s largest moon Titan is an incredible place, but could anything live there? Canadian Astrobiologist Dr Catherine Neish led a study on Titan’s habitability. She joins us for a fascinating chat about what she found.
Send us Fan Mail Titan. The largest moon in the Saturnian system has been a candidate as a habitable world ever since NASA’s Cassini mission sent back the first radar images of its surface in 2004. Astrobiologist Dr. Catherine Neish of Western University in Canada has spent years studying Titan,...
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#65 Spaghettification? This really is a thing. It happens if you get too close to a black hole, but what is it? And how did it get that name?
Send us Fan Mail Space and cosmology throws up some strange effects sometimes, none stranger than spaghettification. Stephen Hawking coined the term for the stretching out that happens when you get close to a black hole. Let's take a look at what it really is, how it works, and if we should have...
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#64 The Odysseus Moon Lander. The first private moon lander has touched down, but is it still ok?
Send us Fan Mail Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines produced the first private mission to land on the moon. The Odysseus lander is just 300 km from the lunar south pole, investigating water ice and demonstrating the capabilities of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program...
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#63 Space Ethics. How do we navigate the ethical challenges of our journey beyond Earth?
Send us Fan Mail So we pollute the upper atmosphere with rocket exhaust, is it worth the benefits of communications satellites and GPS? What about space junk? the garbage of earth orbit. Or mining asteroids? who owns the asteroids, can should they be able to sell the minerals asteroids provide?...
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#62 The iconic Earthrise photograph. Is this the most influential picture from the Apollo era?
Send us Fan Mail Apollo 8 orbited the Moon in December 1968, seven months before the first moon landing. Even though Apollo 8 never landed on the Moon, it did produce one of the most iconic photographs of the Apollo program, the Earthrise photograph. Astronaut Bill Anders snapped a colour picture...
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#61 Will Saturn’s rings really disappear from view in 2025? What’s going on with that?
Send us Fan Mail In the news lately, you might have seen reports that the rings of Saturn are going to disappear from view. What could make that happen? And will they come back? Let’s check out what’s going on with the most spectacular feature in our solar system. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X…
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#60 Astrophotography. It's photography with a completely different technique. How do the pros do it, and what can I do with my smartphone?
Send us Fan Mail Photographing the night sky is a completely different technique to photographing almost anything else. There's hardly any light, the objects are tiny and they move! It's really difficult. We've all given it a go and been disappointed, but how do they get the incredible pictures…
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#59 India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft became the first spacecraft to land in the south polar region of the moon. Let's see why the this incredible spacecraft and rover could be instrumental for the future of human spaceflight.
Send us Fan Mail India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover have landed in the south polar region of the moon. Some craters in this region are permanently shaded from the blazing sun and can have water ice at the base of these lunar craters. India became only the...
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#58 Resident space rock expert Greg Brennecka is back to preview the return to Earth of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft with a sample of asteroid Bennu.
Send us Fan Mail Cosmic Coffee Time’s resident space rock expert and NASA mission scientist Greg Brennecka is back again to preview the return to Earth of NASA’s incredible OSIRIS-REx mission. OSIRIS-REx is coming to the end of an epic seven year journey to collect a rock and soil sample from...
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#57 Space junk! Most of the human made objects orbiting Earth aren’t functional. Some of them are incredible objects that have outlasted their mission durations by years. How will these fascinating relics affect future spaceflight?
Send us Fan Mail Around 80% of the human made objects in orbit are mission left overs. Some of it is real junk, but some of it has an incredible story to tell. What relics from the early space age are held in safe storage in orbit? How does the accumulation of space junk affect mission planning,...
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#56 The June solstice, it defines the Arctic circle, the Tropic of Cancer and the Antarctic circle. It has the longest daylight hours in the northern hemisphere, shortest in the southern. But why do those things happen on one day every year?
Send us Fan Mail Around the 21st of June every year is the June solstice. We might know that it’s the longest or shortest day of the year – depending on which hemisphere you’re in, but why does that happen? And we know of the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, but how does the solstice...
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#55 The spectacular Aurora Borealis and its southern partner Aurora Australis. The astronomical light show is such a cool thing to see, but its science was a mystery until the 20th century.
Send us Fan Mail Ask an eastern Australian about the Southern Aurora, and they might think you’re talking about the old overnight express train between Sydney and Melbourne. But! The train was named after the spectacular light show in the southern sky. The Aurora Australis to use the phenomenon’s...
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#54 NASA’s VERITAS mission to Venus. There’s some good news, there’s some bad news and there’s one incredible discovery hidden for thirty years.
Send us Fan Mail In 2021, NASA announced the VERITAS mission to Venus, NASA’s first voyage to Earth’s twin planet since the early 90’s. Things haven’t gone completely to plan for this project, but one thing VERITAS has already accomplished, it got scientists reviewing data from previous missions,...
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#53 The Hayabusa2 Asteroid Ryugu sample return mission. Space rock expert Greg Brennecka joins us for an incredible up-close look at real life asteroid material.
Send us Fan Mail Our favourite space rock expert Greg Brennecka joins us to talk about the amazing Hayabusa2 mission, the sample return mission to asteroid Ryugu by Japanese space agency JAXA. Greg and his colleagues have been analysing the sample and some of the findings are incredible. What…
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#52 Hundreds of years before GPS there was celestial navigation. Let's see how astronomy and some basic equipment kept old time mariners on course.
Send us Fan Mail Recently, we took a look at GPS and the space science that makes it work. This time, we're going back to an era when navigators had nothing but their equipment and the stars to tell them where they were, even on the open ocean. Celestial navigation combined the sextant, almanac…
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#51 NASA's astronaut class of 1978. We have a compelling chat with Meredith Bagby about this ground breaking group of space shuttle astronauts, and her fascinating book The New Guys
Send us Fan Mail In 1978, NASA changed the rules around who could be selected as an astronaut. Civilian engineers, doctors and scientists could be selected to fly on the then brand new space shuttle. Meredith Bagby joins us to talk about this group, whose social backgrounds were as diverse as…
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#50 We all love GPS, but what space science makes it work?
Send us Fan Mail We all love GPS. The Global Positioning System helps us navigate across country and across town, and it also shows us where our rideshare car is, or how far away our food delivery driver is. Take a look at what space science makes it work, and why it can still provide your...
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#49 The new Mars meteorite impact. NASA Insight has detected a new meteorite impact on Mars! Meteorite expert Greg Brennecka returns to talk about this breathtaking new discovery.
Send us Fan Mail Friend of Cosmic Coffee Time and expert meteoriticist Greg Brennecka returns to talk about the breathtaking detection of a new meteorite impact on Mars. Greg tells us how the impact was detected, and then confirmed with detailed imagery from Mars orbit. What does this tell us…
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About this show
It's cosmology in a cup! - Cosmic Coffee Time is bite sized podcasts making sense of space, astronomy, life, and the universe, best enjoyed with a coffee. A down to earth look at what's up there, and it's just for you spacefans. Grab a coffee and see where in the universe we go this time. Follow on Twitter @CosmicCoffTime
Hosted by
Andrew Prestage