Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Planetary Society goes to TwitchCon 2025

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

The Planetary Society heads to TwitchCon 2025 to explore how scientists and educators use livestreaming to share the excitement of discovery. We begin with Moohoodles, one of Twitch’s pioneering space science streamers and co-host of the live panel “The Planetary Society: Space, Time, and You.” She explains how she built a thriving community around astrobiology and space exploration long before Twitch even had a Science & Technology category. Then we share moments from the panel, featuring a special video message from Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, and highlights of how livestreaming helps inspire new audiences to look up. At the Science & Technology Meet and Greet, Sharkg33k and Paleontologizing explain how their streams connect life on Earth to exploration beyond our planet. Later, Jack Kiraly, The Planetary Society’s Director of Government Relations, joins the show for a Space Policy Update on Jared Isaacman’s renomination as NASA Administrator, examining what it could mean for the agency’s leadership and direction. The episode wraps up with What’s Up with Bruce Betts, The Planetary Society’s chief scientist, celebrating the third anniversary of the end of the LightSail 2 mission and sharing a new random space fact. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2025-twitchconSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Planetary Society goes to TwitchCon. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. We're headed into the world of live streaming to explore how science communication is evolving on Twitch. A platform that's best known for game streaming, but has become an unexpected hub for space outreach and education.

We'll start with my conversation with Moo Hootles, one of the first space science streamers on Twitch, and my co-host for our live panel at TwitchCon 2025. Then we'll share highlights from the panel itself, including a special message from our CEO, Bill Nye, and a discussion about the future of space exploration and public engagement. Later, you'll hear from two amazing science communicators I met at the Science and Technology meetup,

Shark Geek, who combines 360-degree shark videos, educational games, and even metal music to inspire shark conservation, and paleontologizing, who livestreams real fossil excavations. He'll tell us a little bit more about how exploring the study of Earth's ancient past can help us understand our place in the cosmos. After that, Jack Corelli, our director of government relations, joins me for a space policy update about the renomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator. and why his commercial vision for the agency has sparked a lot of debate. And we'll wrap up, as always, with What's Up with Bruce Betz, our chief scientist. We'll celebrate the third anniversary of the end of our Light Sail 2 mission, the Planetary Society's mission that helped inspire many of the science streamers that I met at TwitchCon. If you love Planetaria Radio, I want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries,

make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and all-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. Twitch is a live-streaming platform that started as a place where gamers shared their playthroughs. But over the last decade, it's evolved into a home for all sorts of creators, including artists, musicians, athletes, cosplayers, scientists, and educators. It's a space where people can interact in real time and build communities around what they love. Once a year, those online communities come together in person for TwitchCon, a massive convention filled with panels, workshops, and meet and greets. This year's con was held in San Diego, California, from October 17th to 19th, and it marked TwitchCon's 10th anniversary. The Planetary Society was invited to join the celebration to share more of what's going on in space right now, but also how space science fits into the world of live streaming.

Our invitation came from Moohoodles, or Mooh, one of Twitch's pioneering space science streamers. For more than a decade, she's been building a community of people who love astrobiology and space exploration. Over the past year, I've done a couple of live stream events with Moohoodles. I sat down with her to discuss how she started, how live streaming has impacted science communication, and what moments have inspired her most during her years of sharing space with the world. Hey, Moo. Hello. Seriously, thank you so much for inviting me to come to TwitchCon this year with you. I had such a fun time.

It was so much fun. And thank you so much for joining. I'm so happy you were able to make it and share your expertise on our panel. Well, we've had a lot of fun over the last, you know, year or so jumping into your streams every now and again. I'm just going to come out and say it. You're definitely my favorite space streamer. I'm sure there are others out there. But I just love your channel.

And everyone in your community is so lovely to talk. to. Like, I've had such a great time. Oh, thank you so much. That means a lot to me. And I'm sure my community will also be very happy to hear that. I'm honored. Thank you. How long have you been streaming about space? And what made you decide to launch this Twitch channel about space science and planetary science? Yeah. So I've been streaming on Twitch for over 11 years. I started in like May of 2014.

Initially, I started just to do video game stuff. There wasn't non-gaming content on Twitch at the time, at least I was aware of. So I would actually just kind of bring my passion for space and my love of space into my streams just as I was playing video games. I would just kind of talk about that stuff with chat or nerd out about it. I remember at the beginning of 2015 playing Fallout 3 and talking about, you know, like Mars and the potential for life on Mars and maybe sending humans there one day, just because that's what excites me.

what I like to talk about and people were into it. I ran the astronomy club at my college for a while and I have always been obsessed with astrobiology. So I wanted to bring the lectures that I did for that astronomy club onto my streams as well. So I started kind of doing specific segments for that and yeah, it turned out really well. Like there was an audience for it and that made me really excited because I love talking about this and sharing my passion. I didn't really expect it to turn into a career for me, especially back then. I had no idea. It could be possible, right? I never would have imagined it turning into something where you could, you know, increase scientific literacy and media literacy and build a community of people so passionate

and so excited about space who really want to make a positive difference in the world and in the future that we want to see, which is also why, you know, we love the planetary society. Yeah, it's a very different experience of science education, right? Like when I was a kid, it was all science documentaries and television shows, right? But streaming is a very different thing. What kind of impact would you say that streaming has in space outreach versus these more traditional forms of media? I love that. I totally agree with what you said, by the way, with like, yeah, it's like we only had science communication stuff on shows.

and everything. Like, Bill and I was a huge inspiration to me. It actually kind of started. I don't want to say it started my career, but he did an AMA on Reddit in 2014. And that's the day I made my YouTube channel. He answered one of my questions, and it was so inspiring to me. Like, I didn't even know you could be a science communicator. I just thought, oh, maybe one day I could get a TV show or I'll make a YouTube channel talking about this because I want to share how cool all of this stuff is with people. And then, yeah, that obviously is turned into something more with me through Twitch and everything. But yeah, I think Twitch is definitely a bit more unique compared to YouTube or a TV show or anything because it is live and it's interactive. That is the key to

Twitch. So you can have people in chat come in and just ask questions live to you. And there's a lot of actual scientists on Twitch now who are there to interact and chat with you and they want you to ask questions. One thing I do on my stream, because I know there's a lot of weird, maybe pseudoscience, but more so misinformation out there. And especially with 3i Atlas recently, right? Oh, yeah. I don't expect anyone to be able to decipher through these headline articles and everything

because most people don't spend three days a week looking at space news. It's just kind of like a quick blip of it. So I, you know, make my Twitch channel open to having questions where you can ask for clarification and not be judged. It's like a very welcoming open space where it's like, wait, I heard, you know, 3A Atlas's alien space, spacecraft or something. And I can be like, oh, no, let me like explain what it actually is and where that came from. So you have a better understanding of it. And then also maybe a few things you can look out for in headline articles. So you are more aware of that and can see these like red flags for misinformation next time too, right? And so yeah, I think Twitch is a really unique and awesome environment because you're able to talk to so many different people, and especially in the science and technology category. There's so many different scientists. You can ask questions directly related to their fields. And it's something that,

I feel like we didn't have like a decade ago, really. I know that there were things that I believed that were completely wrong because I read them once in a science book that hadn't yet been updated. And it was a decade or more before I got to ask that question of an actual scientist. And now you can literally just log on to Twitch and ask these questions directly, right? But I think what you point out about the science and technology category is really important because it finally feels like we've hit this critical mass, there were so many science educators on Twitch that it necessitated the creation of a whole new category. What would you say that that's done for the visibility of science communicators on the platform? So, I mean, it's definitely given us a place to exist and a place to be seen, which is

huge. If people are looking for science on Twitch or science communication or just something kind of different and, you know, non-gaming content, they can go to the science and technology category and see who's currently live right now and check them out. It's been really exciting to have that category a bit more bolstered so people can see like, hey, there is actually science communication on Twitch. There's people nerding out on space, sharing their views from telescopes. There's so many amazing, amazing streamers. One unexpected side effect of that that I'd like to share is that there's been a lot more cross-collaboration, I feel. And this is really important, as you know, in sciences. But on Twitch, there's different scientists or different

people who are, you know, into this stuff. And they are collaborating together, talking about things in their different fields and learning about them and getting expired. So there's like legitimate scientific, like legitimate science and research is getting influenced by this relatively small community on Twitch. Like one of my friends, Volcano Doc, does a whole bunch of awesome science on her stream and reads through papers and has been working on her own research. on her stream. And her and I, like, collaborated once talking about, you know, volcanology stuff and the, like, asteroids impacting on Earth and how that could have, like, created life from, like, you know, an astrobiology standpoint. And it was just super fascinating. And there's

so many different things like that where you maybe wouldn't expect, like, a volcanologist and an astrobiologist or a paleontologist or whoever to get together and talk and have, like, overlap or something, right? But then you realize there is overlap or it kind of like unlocks this other part of your brain of like, wait, I could actually use this in something that I'm working on. So I've seen a lot of that happen on Twitch, and it's so cool and so fascinating to see. That's really great to hear because I think so much in the scientific community, we try to reach out to people that are in our similar field, but there's so much that can be revealed and so much new science that can happen when you get to cross-contaminate between different fields, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it is awesome. That's so cool. What would you say are some of your favorite moments that you've had during your many, many years of streaming. Oh, my gosh. There's been so many great moments. A huge highlight for me was actually just in October of last year when I got to go to Kennedy Space Center and stream the Europa Clipper launching on a Falcon Heavy Rocket. I did a whole live stream of our tour around Kennedy Space Center,

at least what I could stream. And it was incredible. That was my first rocket launch that I've ever seen. And I got so emotional on my stream, I sat there and just like cried for a while in pure awe. And it was just a full circle moment for me because back when I was trying to do a different major in college doing astrophysics, like that was my end goal, was doing astrobiology, working on EuropaClipper mission. And being able to be there in a different light as like a science communicator as a Twitch streamer sharing this. So people get excited about it. Yeah, there was a lot of emotions, but it was amazing.

And it was so cool to see it launch. And I'm so excited for that mission. Obviously, I've been able to talk to you, which has been wonderful. You've been on my stream a few times. And so many other amazing scientists and people, it's always really fun to chat with others and learn more about what they do. I was one of the featured watch parties for the Vera Rubin Observatory coming online. Oh, that's so cool. That was so cool.

I actually got access to the photos and everything, you know, before it came online. I got it like the night before. and it took everything in me to not look at them. So my initial reaction could be, you know, shared live on Twitch and also with my community. Something we like doing together is having these experiences together as a community. Being able to share that with a broader audience and like other people on Twitch is just, it's such an amazing feeling. And it's this like cool communal.

It's kind of hard to explain, but it's awesome to share these moments with others. What is like an average day of your stream like? What do you share with people? Yeah, so I start every stream off just looking at some current news in outer space and astrobiology. Astrobiology is the love of my life. I'm, to be clear, not an expert in the field or anything. It's just a huge passion of mine. I would maybe like to do further education in the future on it, though.

But, yeah, I love to share just all of the cool things going on in space. So we look at, you know, new images from different space telescopes. We see what's happening, what, like, kind of research is going on. After I do my science communication stuff and we catch up on all the cool current news happening, I also play video games from retro up to newer stuff. We also do a lot of space games. Yeah, I will bring the science communication from whatever we talked about earlier, just whatever I know into a lot of the space games we play too. Honestly, like if I have two true passions in life, it's space exploration and communication and video games. So seeing someone whose whole career now is sharing these things online.

is absolutely inspiring to me because I think if I had had that example as a younger person, it might have completely changed the arc of my life, right? Yeah, and I mean, that's something I wish I had when I was younger too, because I was always such a huge gaming nerd. I love the sciences. I never thought that you could mix it together like this. But when you dig deeper into it, and this is something I love talking about on my stream as well, like you don't have to be a scientist with a PhD to work in space

or to make a difference in these fields. Like, obviously, there's amazing citizen science happening. And, you know, if you want to be at the cutting edge of research, of course, you need to. But, you know, maybe you love video games and you know, know, know a decent amount of science or you took a lot of physics classes. Like, you could do game development for space games and have those passions, like, overlap. And it's just so cool that there's so many different avenues for people to go into for their careers or different things that they're interested in.

And I definitely agree. it's awesome to see so much happening on Twitch, especially like the kind of gaming psychom overlap. I love doing that stuff. Right. Well, for anyone who's listening to this and might be intrigued by the idea of doing it themselves, do you have any advice? I feel like consistency is key. Picking what kind of content you want to cover, being consistent in your content and consistent in your schedule. Posting on like outside social media things outside of Twitch is really helpful. That's something I need to get better at personally. But yeah, I feel like just kind of going for it, taking your passion, being yourself, and just

like being the most authentic version of you, because there's only one you and, you know, just full on sending it, I guess. Yeah. Right. Send it. Send it. Are there any other space or science communicators on Twitch that you recommend for people? Yeah.

I would love to do a huge shout out to my friend AstroConnuck. He does amazing astronomy, education, streams, and all. Also, astrophotography, he has an awesome telescope that he will, like, live stream from his telescope and do astrophotography. And it's so cool to have that on Twitch. I'd also like to shout out Melissa in denial. She's an Egyptologist and archaeologist. And that is something I've always been so fascinated about.

So seeing her streams, I'm like, you're an actual Egyptologist. I can ask you all these questions or learn about it. It's so cool. And similar to what I do, she also will play video. games and talk about the Egyptology and all of the cool stuff in the game she plays and how, you know, accurate or not accurate it is. And obviously, she posts things on TikTok and everything as well. There's a lot of incredible things that she does. Draw curiosity is really cool as well. She's an insect flight biomechanic. And she has a whole, I know, she's a whole great YouTube channel

on, you know, things that draw her curiosity. So it's awesome to see her, you know, sharing her passion and her expertise. And it's been amazing to see her join Twitch and grow on Twitch. And yeah, I think she's absolutely incredible. So I would recommend. Also, paleontologizing is really cool. He is a paleontologist and he educates and talks all about the field and dinosaurs and how birds are dinosaurs and just so much incredible stuff. I think we all have, you know, seen Jurassic Park or there's just so many kids and even adults who are just so fascinated and interesting. by dinosaurs. So it's so cool to be able to go into his stream and chat with him live about it. But he doesn't always just sit in his office talking about dinosaurs and everything. He actually

goes and digs up dinosaur bones. He does actual live dinosaur digs on his stream. And it's some of the coolest content I've ever seen because that's something I never thought would be accessible to me as just a normal everyday person. I'm not a paleontologist. I can't go into the field and and see this stuff happening. But I can, and everyone can, through his live Twitch streams. So it's absolutely incredible. Well, we're going to hear a little bit from paleontologizing later on in this episode because we met up at the science and technology meetup with a bunch of other space streamers

later on at TwitchCon. So I had so much fun meeting everyone while I was there. And I just want to thank you again for inviting me. I had such a fascinating time, not just meeting all these people, but learning all these technologies for how to stream. And I've been so inspired by all the people I met there, the moderators, the fans. It was just one of the highlights of my last year, for sure. So thank you again for inviting me there, but also onto your stream and for everything you're doing, sharing space with people. I think it's a really unique platform and you're doing it in such

a beautiful way. And I'm just so grateful for what you do. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And I'm so glad you had a great time at TwitchCon meeting everyone. So I'm glad you had a wonderful experience. And thank you again for joining. Thanks so much, Moe. I've been wanting to go to TwitchCon for years. And finally getting to be there was a fantastic experience. I spent the three days of the convention meeting dozens of science streamers

and handing out Planetary Society convention ribbons. I even ran into a few Planetary Society members who were there in the crowd. Between panels and jumping onto random people's live streams, and a surprising number of concerts. It was a reminder of how creative and passionate the live-streaming community really is. Of course, the biggest highlight for me was Moohoodles and my live panel in Nom Nom Theater, called The Planetary Society, Space Time, and You. We were absolutely thrilled to bring space science back to the stage at TwitchCon.

We were also looking forward to sharing that stage with representatives from NASA, but unfortunately, because of the ongoing government shutdown, they weren't able to attend. Still, the show must go on, and we did our best to share a lot of the wonderful things that NASA's been doing in general, but also all of the things that they've been live streaming on Twitch. What you're about to hear is an edited short segment

from that discussion, a celebration of what's going on in space exploration at NASA and at the Planetary Society and about the power of sharing science on live stream. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Good morning. But yeah, welcome to our panel, NASA and the Planetary Society, Space Time, and you.

But, yeah, NASA was not able to be here due to the government shutdown. And I know they were very, very excited to come here and share their knowledge and talk to each and every one of you. Honestly, NASA really loves talking to people, especially people who watch Twitch. So I'm a hoodles. I am a full-time streamer. I do science communication on outer space and astrobiology. I also do variety gaming from retro up to new stuff. I've been streaming over 11 years. I helped pioneer science communication on the platform,

and I'm so happy to be here and join by Sarah. Well, thanks so much for having me. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmud. I'm the host of Planetary Radio at the Planetary Society, which is a weekly space podcast. We talk about things that are going on in space exploration around the world, and we're produced by the Planetary Society, which is the world's largest space interest,

nonprofit. We have tens of thousands of people around the world, and just as Twitchcon is celebrating their 10-year anniversary, we're celebrating our 45th anniversary as an organization. Our CEO is Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Bill couldn't be here in person, because he is all over the place trying to advocate for NASA right now, if you've seen him out and about, but he did take the time to record a video for us because he wanted to share you guys some love. Greetings, TwitchConsters. Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. We promote the scientific exploration of space. And speaking of which, at Twitch, this is the most exciting time in space exploration since the Apollo era. We have a better chance today of answering

the two deep questions than we've ever had in history. Where did we come from? And are we alone in the cosmos? To answer those questions, we need to explore space. And in order to explore space, we've got to get people excited about it and promote the value of it. That's where you all come in, these science communicators, you, you sci comsters. So a shout out to all of you and to moo hoodles for making this possible. Working together, we can, dare I say it. Change the world. Thank you. Have a good conference. I'm so excited and I'm so grateful that Bill took the time to do that video. And yeah, he's awesome. A big inspiration to me. So that's Yeah. So essentially during this panel, we want to talk about, you know,

celebrating 10 years of TwitchCon, 45 years of the Planetary Society. I've been streaming over 11 years. We're going to talk about the past, present, and the future that we want to see of space exploration. So here's a little bit on the history and highlights, some milestones going on. NASA has done a lot of things in space, but I'm not sure how many people are aware of how many other organizations are trying to do this kind of work. One of our biggest things that we ever did together was the light sail mission. It was the first all-crowfunded space mission in history. 50,000 people around the world donated their money so that we could build a solar sail.

Essentially, we built a spacecraft that could actually test whether or not light bouncing off of a solar sail was a viable means of propulsion for a spacecraft. And since we proved that, and I do have to give a shout out to the Japanese space agent, Jaxa. They accomplished it before us, so now NASA and other space agencies around the world are trying to use this technology in order to create space missions that don't need any fuel. That's actually the mission that got me to join the planet Cirrus. That's amazing. Yeah, in 2014, I got a little piece of light sail and everything. It's so cool. There's a bunch of other technology we've been working on. Planet Vac is a little vacuum. You stick onto the feet of

your landers when you land on other worlds, and it sucks up material. so you can get samples by just landing on a place. We tested it this year on a mission that went to the moon as part of the Commercial Lunar Services Program. You may also be familiar with the Europa Clipper mission that is now on its way to the moon of Jupiter. That one is an ocean world. Part of the reason that mission exists at all

is because space fans like you advocated for it. The number of times that that mission was almost canceled, it was our largest letter writing campaign ever and we saved your rope a clipper. Here's some NASA highlights that we want to cover, even though NASA can't be here. But the Perseverance Rover, they did a whole live stream for the landing in 2021, right?

And that was absolutely amazing. I know that was a huge deal for NASA. There was a ton of people watching it, and it was an absolute win for their Twitch stream as well. A big thing that NASA wants to do, from my understanding, is scientific outreach and getting people excited. and inspired to go into STEM or to support NASA

and what they're doing and be really, really thrilled about it. So having these live streams on Twitch where they can interact with the audience and share this with millions of people around the world live is such a huge deal for them to be able to do. So I know that was a big win for them. And yeah, the top right photo there is Europa Clipper launching. I actually got to go to Kennedy Space Center,

and live streamed that launch. And y'all, that was like such a highlight of my life. It was amazing. That was my first rocket launch I've ever seen. It launched on a falcon heavy rocket, and it is currently on the way to Jupiter's Moon Europa. And it'll get there in 2030. So if you're not familiar with Europa,

it has a 10-plus miles of ice and a subsurface ocean larger than all of Earth's ocean. larger than all of Earth's oceans combined. So there's a lot of water on there. And Europa Clipper is not technically a life detection mission, but we're going to learn more about the subsurface ocean and kind of know good places to land a follow-up mission and see if it has everything needed to harbor life.

The bottom photo there is astronaut Don Petit. This was the first ever live-streamed Twitch conversation with an astronaut on the International Space Station. Like, we have the technology. We are doing that stuff now. And it is so exciting. I know in the future NASA wants to do more things like this. They even talked about, you know, maybe one day we'll be having live streams from Mars or something or from the moon.

He showed his camera setup and everything. And by the way, if you miss the live stream of this, it is highlighted on NASA's Twitch page. So if you're not following them, please, please go to twitch. slash NASA, follow them, and yeah, go check out their streams. But I think this stuff kind of really, it inspires me because it always makes me wonder or just think about the vastness of space and how much is out there waiting to be discovered that we don't know. And sometimes we get answers to our questions, right?

We learn more, we're like, hey, we actually answered this huge question. But a lot of the times, we don't get those answers. And instead, we get more questions. And I think that's really exciting because we're able to just learn so much more about space and kind of get closer to the truth of, I don't want to say the truth of the universe, because that sounds weird. But just learning more about cosmology and everything. It's just so fascinating.

I think my favorite thing about space is just the unknown and all of these photos just make me think about that. There's so much out there to be discovered. And every time we learn something new, it's not just about like, oh, now I know something cool about that random world. never going to discover. The spinoff technologies, the ways that it makes our lives better, it's just so profound that I, I mean, this is why we do this, right? I think there's something about it. You learn about space, and it just, it gets into your soul, you know? It really does. And I feel like a lot of things kind of, I always put it on my stream. We have like another

little puzzle piece that gets us closer to, you know, an actual answer. And astrobiology is the love of my life. So I love talking about, you know, every article we read, every news update, another extra little puzzle piece of, are we alone in the universe? And that is truly one of humanity's perhaps oldest and deepest questions. And we might have the answer to that, you know, within the next decade, within the next few years, for me at least, maybe I don't want to be too much of a hype woman, but it feels like any day now, we're going to get that huge news. And I know we have the Mars sample from Perseverance, the Cheyava Falls sample sitting on the surface of Mars that the Perseverance Rover collected, that's the bottom left image there.

And so essentially those leopard spots, as they call it, in the center of the image, could have been formed from life. There are these poppy seeds and leopard spots in this rock. We find these kinds of things here on Earth, but it's usually because some kind of life was doing some kind of chemical process that was taking some material and turning it into something else. And they found that on Mars in an area where we know all of the materials for life are present. It used to have liquid water. And now we have a sample of it. And I'm not saying it's life. We still need to figure that out. But presently, in that temperature environment, there's no

way that we know of to make this kind of rock without life being present, without some kind of microbial life. And that's huge. Yeah. I talk about this on my stream all the time. And I'm a very strong advocate for the Mars sample return mission. But yeah, essentially those could have been created in a high acidity or high heat environment, abiotically, meaning not from life. But the review that came out earlier mentioned that they didn't find evidence of that. So as you said, it's not, hey, this is totally life. But essentially, before we can confirm if it's from life or not, we really need to bring those back to Earth. It is just sitting there. It is waiting. The answers are like, they're so close.

But yeah, the kind of past highlights for me on Twitch is what this site is about and all the things I just love and enjoy talking about. I had the opportunity and the privilege to be on the front page of Twitch for my 10-year stream reversory last year. And that's me being very excited that I got to show off Saturn's Moon Enceladus on there.

And that is one of my favorite moons. Similar to Europa, it has an icy surface, a liquid water ocean, and we know a lot about it due to NASA's Cassini mission flying through Saturn's rings and analyzing all of the dust and actually water vapor that is being spewed out from Enceladus at a rate of like 79 gallons a second, and they actually found that Enceladus has everything needed to harbor life, and in my opinion, it might be the best place in the solar system to look for life outside of Earth. But with that said, obviously, Europa is a great place.

Mars is a great place. Even maybe the atmosphere of Venus. Neptune's moon, Triton, also has an icy surface and liquid water. And that's way out there. So there's a lot of really exciting places for astrobiology and to kind of seek answers. But we really need to make sure these missions are happening to bring the samples back or even go out there and check it out. Like you mentioned, Europa Clipper was almost canceled several times.

And that's a big thing that I really appreciate about the planetary society is the fierce advocacy you all do so NASA missions can happen because I do the same stuff on my stream trying to get people excited, educate people on what's going on and how it can make a difference and, you know, try to point us towards the future that we all want to see. If you'd like to watch our full panel, you can find it on Moohoodle's YouTube channel or write on this episode page at planetary.org slash radio. After our panel, but before I headed home from TwitchCon, I stopped at the science and technology meet and greet. It brought together science communicators from across Twitch, people using live streaming to share everything from astrophysics to archaeology. It was at that meet and meet and greet that I met Shark Geek and Paleontologizing. Here's a bit of what they had to say. So I am Shark Geek, Shark G33K. I stream what I call content creation for shark conservation.

I film sharks with a 360-degree camera, and then I use that footage to teach people about them, get them excited about talking about sharks, science, shark conservation. I make educational games about them. I make educational shark-themed metal music, if you can believe it. A little bit of everything. Casting a broad net, pun intended. I am fascinated by space exploration.

Absolutely love it. A lot of my friends, actually, and people that I follow and watch regularly are space exploration streamers and astronomer streamers. I can't get enough. Folks like Mahoodles, Nerduino, Astro-Kinnock, they are the best. When they're on at night, I don't miss it. The education side of Twitch is growing more and more.

And so I think just the more we get the word out there that Twitch is a place for education, the better off everybody is, because I want to see that whole side of the community just absolutely blow up. My name is Danny Andoza. Paleontologizing is the Twitch channel, and I do paleontology on. Twitch. So going out and digging up dinosaurs live, going over new scientific papers with the audience when I'm back in my office, interviewing other paleontologists doing Q&A, 3D printing, artwork, all kinds of cool stuff. I think that's kind of a key part of being human is exploring what's out there, whether it's looking into the Earth's ancient past or looking into the future of, you know,

human travel in space. I think the most important thing is we're out here. There are scientists on Twitch trying to do live outreach and we're growing in number. It's been really cool to see this year at TwitchCon. Just the number of scientists that we have here at the convention and we've had multiple panels and like meet and greets and things like that. So we're, you know, trying to really grow this mission of science education on the platform. As a paleontologist, sometimes I get the question like, what use is fossil science? Why is this important to fund? Why should people care about it. And perspective is the thing that paleontology gives us that, you know, almost nothing else can. For example, think about how the dinosaurs went extinct. You have this massive asteroid,

the size of San Francisco that slammed into the, you know, the Earth's crust, and it caused a mass extinction event. We would not be here today if that hadn't happened. But that also tells us that we need to be wary of big objects near our planet. And so the perspective that paleontology gives us can kind of lead us to look up to the stars and make sure that we can keep our planet safe. So there are people who are tracking these near-Earth objects, and that makes me feel a little bit better about this as a paleontologist to know that there are folks whose job it is to track these things and possibly deflect them if they're headed toward us. That could one day save humanity. It could save our planet. So it's vitally important.

We'll be right back with the rest of TwitchCon 2025 after the short break. Hi, I'm Kate Howells, public education specialist for the Planetary Society. It's time to celebrate the most inspiring space moments and missions of 2025. Every year we invite space fans around the world to help decide the Planetary Society's best of the year awards, honoring the discoveries, missions, and images that made us all look up in wonder. Now it's time to pick your favorites from 2025. From daring new spacecraft to breathtaking cosmic images, your votes help celebrate the people and projects pushing the boundaries of exploration.

Cast your vote today at planetary.org slash best of 2025. That's planetary.org slash best of 2025. It was such a joy to spend that weekend surrounded by so many people that care not just about science and creativity, but about the ways that they can share who they are and connect with people around the world. I want to send out a heartfelt thank you to all of the space streamers, for sharing their passion for exploration online.

Also, to the moderators that are keeping those communities welcoming and kind and all of the amazing Twitch staff and volunteers who made that convention possible. Like NASA, Twitch has been facing many rounds of layoffs in recent years, and it's the people behind the scenes, the engineers, producers, and support teams that really keep those communities thriving. To everyone I met at TwitchCon, thank you for reminding me why sharing what we love with the world is so important. A few weeks after TwitchCon, major news broke out in U.S. space policy. Billionaire entrepreneur and commercial space traveler, Jared Isaacman, was re-nominated as NASA

administrator. He's flown to orbit twice with SpaceX, commanding both the Inspiration 4 and Polaris Don missions. You may remember that his initial nomination was withdrawn earlier this year. It was the first time in history that a NASA administrator nominee had been polled, and now a new first. he's been re-nominated for the role. It's been an unusual process, one that we've been following for months here on Planetary Radio. Isaacman's commercial approach to leadership has sparked a wide range of reactions across the space community,

from optimism about innovation and efficiency to concern that such a vision could reshape NASA's scientific priorities. To help us make sense of what this could mean for NASA's future, I spoke with Jack Corelli, the Planetary Society's Director of Government Relations. Hey, Jack. Hey, Sarah. So last time we spoke on the show, we were talking about this potentiality that Jared Isaacman might be re-nominated for an asset administrator.

And now it's actually happened. So what do you think this choice might mean for the agency? Well, it goes to show that nothing happens until it all happens at the same time, right? I think it was maybe a few days after we spoke. about it that Jared Isaacman was renominated. And I think what it means for the agency is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I think the agency has been facing a lot of uncertainty, a lot of political instability, and though people like Janet Petro, who served as acting administrator for the first half of

2025 and Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy has been serving as acting administrators since early July. They've tried to provide some stability, I think, to varying degrees of success, depending on who you ask. Secretary Duffy more recently has gotten more involved in the policymaking side of the NASA administrator job. But there's only so much that an acting person can do, right? Especially as it relates to engaging with Congress, because you're only there for, for as long as the president says you can serve in that acting capacity, as we saw. You know, this is the first time that an acting administrator, Janet Petro, was taking off the position, right, in being replaced by Secretary Duffy.

And so having a Senate confirmed leader, whether that confirmation happens before the end of the calendar year, first part of next year, is going to be really significant because it provides a level of political stability, let alone a policy direction. that the agency could go down. Speaking of policy direction, though, I know there was recent reporting in Politico about Jared Isaacman's Project Athena, basically his vision for reshaping NASA in a more commercial sense. Can you talk a little bit about that and how that might affect the agency if he is actually confirmed?

Absolutely. So full disclosure, I have read Project Athena, cover to cover all 60-something pages of it. The document is very clearly written for a different people. of time. And what I mean by that is that it's dated for May of this year of 2025. And in May of 2025, if we can go back in our internal time machines and remember, that was when the Office of Management and Budget had just put out the official top line, that skinny budget, right? I think May 2nd was the date that the skinny budget had come out. After months of speculation, rumors, and leaks, indicating that major changes were underway at the OMB for NASA's budget, right?

This is where we learned about the 47% cut to Science Mission Directorate, major changes to the Artemis program, the elimination of the Gateway Project. So there was all of the speculation finally being confirmed by documentation coming out of OMB. And Jared, at the time, still just nominee for NASA. administrator, was trying to reconcile the vision that he has for a more ambitious, streamlined, efficient agency, reconciling that with budget cuts that were kind of thought to be inevitable. Congress hadn't formally pushed back on any of it in large part because the appropriations

process didn't really get started quite yet, right? because that gets kicked off by the president's budget request coming out. And so this is a document that was kind of built out of a period of uncertainty of, well, if I have less money as administrator, how do I still accomplish those Title 51 requirements, right? Those legal requirements for the agency to do all these things. And so Project Athena is really not so much a policy manifesto as just a snapshot in time of what Jared's personal ambition is for the agency and how he would have tried to achieve those

things under a more constrained budget environment. Since it's come out, since the president's budget came out, and since Project Athena was written, Congress has resoundingly rejected the president's budget request. In such an unexpected, maybe not so much unexpected, Congress is always very supportive of the space program, but in such a stark rebuke of the president's budget, right, really, OMB's budget. I don't think the president really would be interested in the things that the budget tried to do, like, you know, surrendering solar system exploration for a generation, right? But sort of in that context, in that May 2025 mindset, Jared was looking at where in the process, it really was the document itself is serious. is a bullet points, mostly, asking, I think, earnest questions about how do we do what NASA does

better? How do we get more out of it? How do we find cost savings? Where are there areas? So I know one of the things that has been talked about a lot has been the science as a service model, right? I think that's sort of the phrasing that's come out of that document. And that really only pertain to like a small portion of the Earth Science Division, right? Where can, instead of building a new spacecraft to collect a specific set of data, if that data is commercially available? Is it better for the government to buy it from commercial vendors, as it has already been trying to do, right? I think that that's part of, I think, maybe where some of the consternation doesn't make sense is NASA is already trying to do a lot of these things. So you have Simplex, right, the small

innovative missions for planetary exploration. That is a project where they are trying to use more commercial off-the-shelf components to make more planetary smaller, more cost-efficient, or less costly planetary science missions has not necessarily panned out, right? There's been four attempts at launching those, and all four have failed, with the fifth one coming up with the Escapade launch, maybe as this show is airing. But it's a gamble, right? That the agency has been working towards of where can we commercialize things. So it's not wholly unaligned with where NASA is already moving for certain elements of the science program.

Where I think it runs, Project Athena runs into some roadblocks is that it doesn't necessarily get what that value of science is. It's not like you can go to the store and say, I would like three sciences, please. like it's science is a process right and fundamental science where you have no there's no end state there's no end product that gets you that like you're it's you're asking these open-ended questions and you're developing a question you're developing a hypothesis you're developing methodology to determine okay i need data at this resolution of this specificity this much of it to answer this fundamental question about our universe, there's not really a commercial case for that. Parts of it can be commercialized, right? I mean, you can go and buy commercial off-the-shelf components or buy standardized satellite buses from any of the number of providers that do that. But the actual, the fundamental goal of the mission has no commercial incentive. And that's why the government

does it. That's why our tax dollars go to that, is that this is something that has long-ranging implications, not only for our understanding of the universe, but in the development of novel technology that leads to breakthroughs in commercial technology. Our lives get better every day because we're searching for these answers in the deepest, darkest holes across the solar system, right? Finding the origins of, or maybe potential origins of a second genesis of life in the solar system has no commercial application. But all the tools that you need to get to that point improves life here on Earth, right? It's sort of this symbiotic relationship we have with fundamental science. Jared is clearly coming at this from a commercial perspective. This has been

his background, right? And it's the reason why he was nominated. I was a little concerned by some of the commentary about the different NASA facilities. You know, what does JPL even do? Well, a lot, it turns out. I would say, I mean, I think the questions asked in the document are earnest. I I don't think they're coming from a place of malice, of asking, you know, what facilities at Goddard can be relocated to Johnson Space Center or that are duplicative of things already happening at Johnson Space Center, which is, you know, a question that's posed in this document. I don't know if it was Jared's intent to say, like, I don't think that Goddard should exist, right? I think there is a tenuous line right between those two modes of thinking. I think Jared is someone who has come out time and time again and talked about the unique things that NASA does. And obviously, I think we focus a lot on launch because it's the big fireworks show right at the beginning of a mission,

maybe more designating a notable halfway point between the development and operation of a mission. But focusing just on launch only gets part of that picture of like what NASA does and looking at all of these unique programs that it runs Rovers on Mars, space telescopes, Earth orbiting

satellites or planetary body orbiting satellites, right? That collect data sets dating back many years. You look at the Lansat program, right? That has been operated by NASA. I think we're on Lanset 9. Right? Like this is a continuous data set of

of the Earth environment since 1976. That's a huge benefit, right? And that's publicly available information. There are things that NASA does that lay the foundation for other industries that no single actor can replace. And I think Jared understands that. Though, I think, again, I think he's coming at it from, with the right intent of having a stronger space program

that's focused on those unique things. He is coming at it from that sort of business CEO mindset, and I think government does not necessarily operate very well with just that mindset, right? But I also think he's maybe surrounding himself with people that have those varied perspectives, that he's not coming in there to say, I'm the only person capable of changing things and here's how I'm going to do it. Government is a consensus-based process, right? You have to work with Congress.

you have to work with your other nominees and designees of the other agencies. It's a collaborative experience, right? And so he's coming in with a good intent. He's coming in with fresh ideas and hopefully a willingness to learn about how government works and how you can make the government effective at doing these things. What do you think is the timeline potentially for his confirmation? We're not really expecting. timeline. This has never happened before. Yeah. And we're in a government shutdown right now.

And we're in a government shutdown. Maybe over by the end of this week. But, you know, I think we're all trying to read the same tea leaves in things coming out of the House of Representatives right now who have been out of session since mid-September. And so this is, there's a process, right, that we have to go through. So he was nominated the first time at the beginning of this year. I think formally nominated at the beginning of this year. I think the president in, during the transition, I think the date was December 4th of 2024, was when the president indicated at the earliest time in any presidential administration that had selected their NASA administrator nominee. So Jare's nomination then formally was submitted to the Senate

in January of this year. We then waited until early April for the confirmation hearing. In terms of going forward, the U.S. Senate has 20 legislative days left of 2025. That's calendar days that have been indicated as session days. That's when activities of the U.S. Senate can take place. I will say it has been submitted as a separate nomination, which typically is going to mean there is going to have to be a confirmation hearing, and then that confirmation hearing is going to follow by a vote by the committee, which any nominee doesn't have to pass out of the committee, right?

you want to have the support of the committee of jurisdiction that oversees your position, and then goes to a full vote of the Senate. So on the timeline that we're on right now, we're looking at, I mean, 20 legislative days is not enough. Plus, they have to finish the appropriations process for FY26. There's just so much on their plate right now. I could see a situation which they try to expedite this, and that could, we could see maybe a confirmation vote before the end of the year, but they'd have to put off a lot of the other work. that they're doing as it relates to say NASA's budget, which is also vitally important. And I think Congress really wants to have their say on this. They've been very intentional

about supporting NASA. So that's a long way of saying, I don't know what the possible outcome might be in this situation. It could be a while. Thanks so much, Jack. Thanks, Sarah. It's been a busy season for space news, but this week also marks a really special milestone for us here at the Planetary Society. November 17th is the third anniversary of the end of our light sail mission, our crowdfunded solar sailing spacecraft. Even though its journey ended when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere,

its legacy lives on. And as I found out at TwitchCon, not only is it inspiring scientists and engineers, but streamers like Moohoodles. To celebrate the achievement, here's what's up with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist, and the program manager for Light Sail 2. Hey, Bruce.

Serra. So I got to hang out with Mahoodles at TwitchCon, and during the panel, she told me that she joined the Planetary Society because of light sale. Oh, very cool. I know. We're coming up on the three-year anniversary of the end of the mission. So, I don't know, it's always a special thing for us whenever we mark these anniversaries for our spacecraft, but also really cool to meet more people that joined because of it. And you got to be program manager. So you saw the whole arc of that program.

Yes, it was quite the program. And I was in at the beginning or near the beginning and very, very, very involved in the last few years with Lightsail too as the program manager. And also the picture guy. And the picture guy. Well, we shared one of those pictures at TwitchCon in the panel. So people got to see it on the big screen. As a nerd, it's super fun to be able to be a panelist in the convention center that I've been to so many conventions for. And while I was there, Mahoodles wasn't the only person that told me they joined on because of the light sale. And I know it's like 50,000 donors and members around the world were a part of this. What was it like seeing that level of public engagement and something that you were working on? Oh, it was great. It was wonderful. As you say, we had over 50,000 donors, including most of our members, but also others. It was all funded by individuals, the entire light sale program.

And we had some public events, but then we had a lot of things that, of course, we were putting out videos. We were putting out written things, which I was writing a lot later on, on some of the technical sides. And the responses we get, people were just very enthusiastic. Something about a big, shiny, weird thing being pushed only by the force of light that most of us don't even realize exists is pretty cool. It's really hard to do, but it's pretty cool. Well, RIP Light Sale. I'm really glad we got to do that. But just because we didn't come up with Light Sale 3 doesn't mean that we're not still working on it.

We still have our step grant program, which also people ask me about at TwitchCon. And I understand we're asking for proposals sometime soon, right? Yes, yes. Within the next couple weeks, I don't give a specific date because it's super secret. No, I just want to make sure everything should be lined up. But in the next couple weeks, and we'll mention it on plan. monetary radio. You've got a couple months if you are interested in proposing. Again, it's for any proposal in science and technology related to planets related to one of our three core

enterprises, find life and explore planets and defend the Earth regarding asteroid threat. And there's all sorts of information, but it's really serious people, I know proposing to have backgrounds and this stuff. And we've gotten some nice projects. So it's a way, we've always done science and technology projects, but we've done more in recent years. And then we created this, I wanted to create a program that was a little less ad hoc, a little less who we happen to meet so that we can do that, too, if there's an amazing opportunity, but we can take and do a real proposal review and find the best things that use our member and donor money most effectively to advance science and technology and get the public excited about it. That again

was a great thing about lightsail was it was just inherently as shown by the people, the number of people we had involved, and by the press, it was people were interested and excited, and we were putting out information for them. So it was cool. And every year on the anniversary of the mission burning up in the atmosphere, I wear my light sail necklace and, you know, toast to our spacecraft. Cool. To do it for our launch, too. Or more significantly, when we first deployed the sales, successfully. That was the real challenge. And then flying it successfully was a long and arduous and rewarding process as we successfully demonstrated what we set out to, which was to demonstrate controlled solar sailing in a small spacecraft. Since this was the size of a loaf of bread when it

launched, unfurled about the size of a boxing ring of silver mylar and did controlled solar sailing. Yeah, we succeeded. We proved. We proved. the technology. And I say we as if I was like a part of the team at the time. But long before the Planetary Society did this, like I remember reading about solar sales as a kid and being so inspired by the idea. I actually wrote an article about Light Sail before I ever joined the Planetary Society because I loved the project so much. So, I'm pretty cool. I'm pretty inspired by the fact that our team accomplished this and all of the other cool Sytech projects that we're helping launch now. It makes me feel like we're doing a lot of good to help people,

launch these really cool ideas that need that funding. We are. And we're trying to, with all along, we've tried to fill niches that aren't being filled by funding or that need a little bit more or need to get from one step to the next. So that was on our biggest project scale ever. What solar sailing was kind of trying to kick it to that next level so that others with deeper pockets, meaning agencies and the like, can pursue it. But we've been told by people at agency, a lot. It's a lot easier to sell things once you can point to something and say, hey, that worked. And even though in the theory, it would work, having a demonstration is rather powerful.

Oh, yeah. Now, we're going to make it into the history book someday when one of those little light sales or solar sales makes it out somewhere into the far solar system or who knows, maybe beyond. That's way in the future. But one can dream. shall we move on to a related random spacefax rewind the light sail spacecraft we just talked about that after three and a half years 18,000 orbits of the earth and about 800 million kilometers or 500 million miles that's when it burned up so it went a long ways and the new part is I should have but I didn't realize before. It basically went the distance around the Earth

as the distance from the sun or Earth to Jupiter. Wow. That's really far. Yeah. Yeah. It takes a heck a lot bigger rocket energy efficiency in your solar sail, things like that to actually go there because that whole pesky gravity thing. But it went a long ways and a lot of orbits.

Go light sail. Go light sail. All right, everybody. you go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what that thing flying over your head is. If it's blinking lights, it's not a satellite. But it could be aliens, but it's not. Thank you and good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio,

but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love this show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at Planetary Radio T-shirts at Planet dot org slash shop, along with lots of other cool, spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review and a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through planetary radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email, Planetary

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My name is Sarah al-Ahmad, the host and producer of planetary radio. And until next week, Ad Astra.