Engineering Podcasts – To the moon and beyond

engineering careers  Engineering Podcasts –  To the moon and beyond

Marking 50 years since the first moon landing, To the moon and beyond is a five-part podcast series from The Conversation.

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Through interviews with academic experts around the world – from space scientists to historians, lawyers, futurists and a former astronaut – science journalist Miriam Frankel and space scientist Martin Archer explore the past 50 years of space exploration and what the 50 years ahead have in store.

Since that first landing 50 years ago growing number of countries and private companies have since started exploring the moon with robotic spacecraft and landers, with China recently becoming the first country to land a rover on the far side of the moon. These players are now in a new space race to put people back on the moon in the next few years. But who will be first and where will it all take us?

Starting in 1969, the team speaks to an astronaut-turned-academic about what it must have been like for Armstrong to take that first small step. And talks to historians about why we suddenly stopped sending people to the moon in 1972.

The series goes all the way forward in time to 2069. Looking at plans to use the moon as a staging post for future space exploration. This could take humans as far as Mars and the habitable icy moons surrounding the gas giant planets.

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