Blue Dot 106: Traveling To Exoplanets

Summer travel season means it is time to hit the road. This one is very long if not winding as we learn about what it would be like to travel to planets beyond our solar system! Dave visits with Eric Mamajek, Deputy Project Scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. Dr. Mamajek gives an overview of the history of detecting planets beyond our solar system as well as the many different kinds of worlds that we have discovered in the past few decades. Then we visit with Arielle Samuelson. Arielle is a web manager who has helped pool the resources of scientists and artists to create the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Exoplanet Travel Bureau. You can see what it would be like to travel to an alien landscape with virtual reality simulations and whimsical travel posters promoting destinations light years away from our solar system. FInally, Sheryl Hosler, aka The Roving Naturalist, joins us for her report on strange lifeforms on our own planet that emit their own light in a story about bioluminescence.