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Blue Dot: A Tale of Two NASA missions: NEA Scout and Oceans Melting Greenland

Dave helps profile two NASA missions, one about to begin and one that has just been completed. First, we preview the NEA Scout mission that will launch aboard the giant Space Launch System as part of the Artemis 1 uncrewed test flight to the Moon. While the moon rocket is massive, the largest since the Saturn V/Apollo era, the tiny CubeSat spacecraft NEA Scout is the size of a shoebox. One of the mission's principal investigators, Les Johnson joins Dave to talk about the mission that will use a solar sail to propel it beyond the Moon to a Near-Earth Asteroid.

Then Dave has his good friend Josh Willis on to talk about the completion of OMG -- Ocean's Melting Greenland. Josh has been the principal investigator for the program for the past six years and shares how much warming ocean water is dramatically accelerating the melting of Greenland's glaciers. While it is a weighty subject, we do have a visit from Josh's alter ego, Climate Elvis, to lighten the mood!

Dave Schlom is the longtime host and creator of Blue Dot. From surfing to Voyager in interstellar space, rock guitar to orcas in our imperiled oceans, the topics on Blue Dot are as varied as the host’s interests and connections -- which are pretty limitless! An internationally respected space history journalist, Dave is also deeply fascinated by all aspects of the grand workings of nature’s awesome machinery on scales ranging from galactic to subatomic. And topics take in all aspects of the arts and sciences.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.