Weekly Space Hangout - Dr. Scott Bellamy, Mission Manager for DART
Release Date: 01/14/2022
The 365 Days of Astronomy
Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. From May 2024. Today's 2 topics: - It is essential that asteroid hunters keep track of potentially dangerous asteroids to make sure that their orbits haven’t changed as they encounter other objects in space to make them a threat to our home planet. - Life on Earth appears to have formed in our oceans. Scientists are thus on the hunt for other worlds which have oceans of liquid water and thus potentially could be the home...
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From Jul 4, 2018. For the first time ever, astronomers have captured a direct image of a newly forming planet orbiting around a newly forming star. It’s a stunning photograph, not only for the science and what was observed, but what it means the future of exoplanetary astronomy. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go...
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From July 2, 2025. Join us as we look at two parallel stories - the development of the Vera Rubin Observatory and the SpaceX Starship rocket. Both projects are 20 years in the making, and both were supposed to start work in 2019. Both hit new milestones in June, and it's time to review their very different progress. Also included in this episode: Tales from the launch pad. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon...
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Hosted by Chris Beckett & Shane Ludtke, two amateur astronomers in Saskatchewan. The Actual Astronomy Podcast presents The Observer’s Calendar for July 2025. In this episode we talk about how to see Mercury, the Moon as it pairs with Spica, Antares, Saturn, Jupiter, several carbon stars and some deep sky objects like M6 & M7. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit...
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Paul Hill and Dr. Jenifer “Dr. Dust” Millard host. Damien Phillips, John Wildridge and Dustin Ruoff produce. Brace yourselves! This is the longest podcast that 365 Days has ever had! 1 hour 34 minutes! A bumper episode or is that a Jumper episode if Jeni has her way. Paul has new scope and Jeni has been seeing the Sun. We have terrible news from LIGO, the end of Milkomeda, Light pollution paradox, Vera Rubin first light, a new satellite from Wales, spaceX kablooie, leaks on the ISS and of course the usual skyguide and emails! Phew! We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days...
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Black holes come in many sizes. Small, medium, large & extra large. The size of a black hole mostly depends on how massive the star was before it ran out of fuel, exploded as a supernova and collapsed under its own extreme gravity. The more massive the black hole, the stronger and larger its effect on the fabric of space and time. Here’s the new bit! In a recent study, astronomers found that even tiny black holes have immense power to shape their part of the galaxy. Far more than previously thought. Black holes can rip apart a star that comes too close by. Even the tiniest...
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Hosted by: Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela L. Gay Streamed live June 25, 2025. The time has come. The mighty Vera Rubin Observatory has finally come on line and delivered its “first light” images. And by Pamela’s rules that means we get to talk about it! So let’s do that! After decades of waiting, we have images from Vera Rubin Observatory! SUPPORTED BY YOU This Episode is made possible thanks to our Patrons on Patreon. Join at the Galaxy Group level or higher to be listed in our YouTube videos. Thanks to: BogieNet, Stephen Vei, Jeanette Wink, Siggi Kemmler, Andrew Poelstra, Brian...
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Dr. Al Grauer hosts. Dr. Albert D. Grauer ( ) is an observational asteroid hunting astronomer. Dr. Grauer retired from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006. From October 2024. Today's 2 topics: - To discover what would happen if an asteroid were to strike a large body of water, Dr. Galen Gisler led a team of scientists who used high performance computing facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory to calculate and visualize a 3-D model of an asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere over one of the world's oceans. These efforts won them the Best Visualization and Data Analytics...
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Hosted by Dr. Jacinta Delhaize, Dr. Tshiamiso Makwela & Dr. Daniel Cunnama. In this milestone episode of The Cosmic Savannah, hosts Tshiamiso, Jacinta and Dan celebrate the start of Season Six and the podcast’s fifth anniversary. They engage in an enlightening discussion with Associate Professor Renée Hložek from the Dunlap Institute, focusing on her research in dark matter, dark energy, and the cosmic microwave background. Highlights include the significance of science communication, diversity in STEM, and Dr. Hložek’s involvement with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. ...
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From June 18, 2025. In this episode we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Fermi Paradox by looking at a bunch of science capable of preventing and destroying civilizations. We also review our latest not-so-great attempts to land on the moon and launch a rocket that (if it worked) could carry us to Mars. We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs. Just visit: and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too! Every bit helps! Thank you!...
info_outlineHost: Fraser Cain ( @fcain )
Special Guest: This week we are excited to welcome Dr. Scott Bellamy to the WSH. Scott is the Mission Manager for NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission which successfully launched in the early morning hours from Vandenberg atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on November 24, 2021.
Scott Bellamy is one of the Mission Managers in the Planetary Missions Program Office (PMPO) at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, AL. Presently, Scott is responsible for day-to-day oversight of the Europa Clipper flagship mission, as well as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.
DART's mission is to conduct a real-life experiment in changing an asteroid’s orbit through kinetic impact. In late September 2022, DART will intercept the moonlet (i.e., Dimorphos,) of the asteroid Didymos — a binary system — and slow Dimorphos’ orbit by up to 10 minutes. DART is the first-ever mission of this type and is sponsored by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
Europa Clipper, on the other hand, will launch in October 2024 to perform a detailed exploration of Jupiter’s ocean-world moon, Europa. This mission will provide priceless information on the thickness and composition of the ice shell to possibly enable a future mission to land a probe on Europa and search for microbial life.
Prior to these missions, Scott was simultaneously the Mission Manager for another project that we at CosmoQuest hold near-and-dear to our hearts, the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to obtain and return the first-ever United States asteroid sample; the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster–Commercial (NEXT-C) project providing DART’s primary propulsion; and the Near Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) mission to provide the capability for detecting low-observable asteroids.
Scott originally came to Marshall Space Flight Ccenter as the Air Force Liaison Office in 2008 and afterwards retired with over 25 years of service. He then served in several roles, including being a member of the very small team that shaped what later became the Space Launch System (SLS), before joining the Planetary Missions Program Office in 2013.
Regular Guests:
Ashley Walker ( https://www.blackinastro.com/ @That_Astro_Chic )
Dave Dickinson ( http://astroguyz.com/ & @Astroguyz )
Pam Hoffman ( http://spacer.pamhoffman.com/ & http://everydayspacer.com/ & @EverydaySpacer )
This week's stories:
- Diamond rain in the ice giants.
- James Webb. Again.
- Everything to see in the night sky in the next month.
- A strange mystery at Jupiter. SOLVED!
- An interstellar probe proposal.
We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.
Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can!
Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!
Every bit helps! Thank you!
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The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu
Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at [email protected].