Weekly Space Hangout - Jan 9, 2015: Andy Weir of "The Martian"

Host:

Fraser Cain (

@fcain

)

Special Guest:

Andy Weir

, author of "The Martian" Andy was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. "The Martian" is his first novel.

Guests:

Morgan Rehnberg (

cosmicchatter.org

/

@cosmic_chatter

) Ramin Skibba (

@raminskibba

) Brian Koberlein (

@briankoberlein

) Dave Dickinson (

@astroguyz

/

www.astroguyz.com

) Nicole Gugliucci (

cosmoquest.org

/

@noisyastronomer

)

This Week's Stories:

SpaceX Launch Delayed to Jan 10

Checking in with Opportunity

Super oceans on Super Earths?

Astronomy 2015

Comet Lovejoy

8 New Exos for Kepler (225 AAS)

More AAS Meeting News

Killer stars heading our way...

quasar backlighting to study Milky Way

New Andromeda image

A recipe for making planets

Poking at the Early Universe

Spooky Nebula is Coldest Known Object in Universe

GAO Upholds NASA Funding for SpaceX and Boeing Space Vans/Sierra Nevada Loses Their Protest

NASA's Chandra Detects Record-Breaking Outburst from Milky Way's Black Hole

Hubble Discovers that Milky Way Core Drives Wind at 2 Million MPH

Potentially Dangerous Asteroid to Fly by Earth on January 26

NASA's Kepler Marks 1000th Exoplanet Discover, Uncovers More Small Worlds in Habitable Zones

Crowdsourcing Exceeds One Million Classifications of Possible Planetary Habitats

Super-Earths Have Long-Lasting Oceans

JWST Hardware Entering Key Test Phase

Crash Course Astronomy: New Astronomy Video Series Premiers on Thursday, January 15, 2015 [starring Phil Plait]

America Is Colder than Mars. Some Parts of it, Anyway

Astronauts Get Their Own LEGO Minifigures on Space Station

Neil deGrasse Tyson Is Bringing Science to Late Night Television

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Friday at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Google+, Universe Today, or the

Universe Today YouTube page

.

You can join in the discussion between episodes over at our

Weekly Space Hangout Crew group

in G+.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today, founding the website in March 1999. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast.