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PODCAST

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage

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

science astronomy

All Episodes

8:47

#82 Apollo-Soyuz at 50! It’s been a half century...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/08/31

Send us a text 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 cooperation led to the Shuttle-Mir program in the 90s and the present day International space station. They all began with the spirit of cooperation from Apollo-Soyuz. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on...

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9:08

#81 After centuries of Earth’s rotation slowing down,...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/07/31

Send us a text 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 has been speeding up. Even more strangely, we don’t really understand why. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special content X.com/CosmicCoffTime Email us! cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com You can req...

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8:10

#80 Plants on the Moon. An Australian team of...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/06/30

Send us a text 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, essential elements of living away from Earth. Let's check out the plan to experiment with germinating seeds in shoebox sized 'lunariums' on the Moon within the next 12 months. Follow Cosmic Coffee Tim...

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11:30

#79 Launched in 1972 for Venus, Kosmos 482 failed to...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/05/31

Send us a text 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 exploration has finally returned, re-entering Earth’s atmosphere decades after its failed journey. Though the mission never reached Venus, Kosmos 482’s dramatic, delayed descent closes a half-century chapter i...

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8:55

#78 The Andromeda Galaxy is a cosmic neighbour that’s...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/04/30

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 us more about dark matter and it could be home to billions of planets. It’s a very cool neighbour, but one day - it’s kinda going to move in! Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special content X.com/CosmicCoffTi...

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6:09

#77 The stranded astronauts are finally home after 9...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/03/31

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 home safely. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special content X.com/CosmicCoffTime Email us! cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com You can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi! We'd lov...

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10:45

#76 The Apollo program was the high point of the...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/02/28

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 triumph, there was tragedy and a very near miss, and one of the most underrated aspects of NASA's space program - the lunar roving vehicles that let the astronauts explore more than seven kilometres from the Lunar Module. T...

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10:59

#75 NASA's Project Gemini was a spectacular program...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2025/01/31

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 was just the project to resolve all of these issues. It was a proving ground, for learning, testing and practicing the skills needed for lunar missions. Gemini wasn't the first program to accomplish spaceflight, and it...

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11:28

#74 At the beginning of the space race, Project...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/12/31

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 was an enormously significant step toward the Apollo moon landings just six years later.So who were the Mercury astronauts and what was the mission profile of these first six crewed spaceflights?Follow Cosmic Coffee ...

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6:02

#73 NASA’s Project Mercury Monument has turned 60!...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/11/30

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 groundbreaking project, in 1964 NASA paid tribute to Mercury with a four metre high stainless steel monument with a time capsule that would remain sealed beneath it until the year 2464, five centuries later. What was so ...

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9:21

#72 The space pioneers from Earth weren’t humans,...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/10/31

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 orbital flight that were used to test equipment and living things’ capacity to survive and work in weightlessness. There were primates, dogs, mice and rabbits that crewed orbital and suborbital test flights. And the ani...

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6:21

#71 Earth has a new moon! For about the next 8...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/09/30

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 about 11 metres across and won’t be visible to anyone who doesn’t have a professional large-scale telescope, but we’ll know it’s there! and although it will only stay for about 2 months, 2024 PT5 will be back again in...

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7:05

#70 The Boeing Starliner capsule's first crewed test...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/08/31

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 Suni Williams back to Earth. The two astronauts were left with no way to get home. The two capsules already docked at the space station couldn’t be used, so the astronauts were stranded. Let’s find out what ha...

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7:42

#69 NASA's Curiosity rover has just made the most...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/07/31

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 did it simply by running over a rock! One of Curiosity's wheels crushed a rock. It had looked just like any other orange martian rock, but when it shattered under Curiosity's wheels, it revealed breathtaking yellowish g...

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7:14

#68 A piece of space history was written this month,...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/06/30

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 the side of the moon that we never see from Earth, why is the lunar crust thicker? Why are there fewer 'seas' on the far side? And what lies beneath the lunar crust?All of this against the background of a surface operat...

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18:05

#67 OSIRIS-REx NASA mission scientist Greg Brennecka...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/05/31

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 answered by the data already. How old is Bennu? Is there organic material? Where was the asteroid formed? Is Bennu different from what we expected? But hasn't been all smooth sailing. The mission team had to go into full inn...

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23:46

#66 Saturn’s largest moon Titan is an incredible...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/04/30

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6:46

#65 Spaghettification? This really is a thing. It...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/03/31

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6:19

#64 The Odysseus Moon Lander. The first private moon...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/02/29

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5:56

#63 Space Ethics. How do we navigate the ethical...

Cosmic Coffee Time with Andrew Prestage ·

2024/01/31

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82 results

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