Joe Palka
speaker
237 appearances
31 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 29 Aug
Joe Palka’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 31 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 7.
Appearances
The spacecraft has been collecting data and sending it to Earth since it went into orbit around Mars more than a decade ago.
But last December, a brief radio signal indicated the craft had suddenly started spinning out of control.
That meant it was no longer able to point its solar panels towards the sun, and that meant the batteries went dead, making the probe inoperable.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
Once upon a time, there were plenty of blue whales in Antarctic waters, but commercial whaling changed that.
Writing in the African Journal of Marine Science, the researchers say prior to 1978, some 350,000 blue whales were killed.
By some estimates, the population declined by 97%.
Sightings of blue whales remain rare.
The researchers could only confirm 12 sightings off the coasts of Namibia and South Africa between 1964 and 2025.
But most occurred since 2012, seeming to confirm predictions that whales are slowly returning to the waters of the southern Atlantic.
Similar increases were seen for sightings of fin whales, another endangered species.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
The telescope has the working title of the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
As the name suggests, the goal is to make measurements of planets that might, possibly, harbor some form of life.
To do that, aerospace engineers will need to develop some new technologies.
For example, sun shields that can block the light from the stars around which the distant planets rotate, and cameras that can be pointed precisely for long periods of time so they can capture the faint light from these distant objects.
Scientists will also have to decide what types of signals will convince them that a planet orbiting another star might actually harbor life.
Assuming all the technical hurdles can be overcome, launch of the habitable world's observatory is likely more than a decade away.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
The telescope has the working title of the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
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