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 Moonwalkers, the first humans to set foot on another world. The chances of that were incredibly slim. These coincidences don’t have any special meaning, in fact it would be weird if there weren’t...

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 look at the newly announced crew, why these astronauts were chosen, what Artemis III will actually accomplish, and why the announcement has already sparked debate about the future of human space explorat...

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 some incredible strategies for managing high risk objects, and we look at a dramatic test from 2022. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special content X.com/CosmicCoffTime Email us! cosmiccoffee...

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 explores how our understanding of the cosmos has evolved from ancient observers tracking the stars, through the revolutionary ideas of Copernicus and Newton, to modern discoveries about dark matter and the o...

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 we just can’t test on Earth. Artemis 4 will be truly amazing. That’s the mission that’s going to take people back to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972. Follow Cosmic Coffee T...

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 backyard to monitor candidate stars from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and studies their brightness over time. If the light dims by as little as half a percent, he's found ano...

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 tugged this way and that way by nearby stars and stellar systems. These are rogue planets. No sunrise, no sunset, no heat from an outside source. Just starlight and blackness as it wandered aimlessly ...

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 questions, and maybe even real life duplicates of ourselves. Problem is, we would never be able to observe them, or even test for their presence, or even know if they exist. So does it matter? Follow Co...

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, Artemis II will test the modern systems under the same conditions the landing missions. There will be a crew of 4 including the first person of colour, the first woman and the first non American to fl...

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 story, and it might just have been the luckiest thing that ever happened for us. Without the Moon, life as we know it might never have existed. Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special content X.c...