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
It then took scientists on Earth years to analyze and understand the analysis.
The Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2013 with the goal of making just this kind of finding.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
The spacecraft is called SPARKS, an acronym for Star Planet Activity Research CubeSat.
CubeSats are a class of tiny, inexpensive probes that can still do significant scientific research—
SPARKS has an ultraviolet telescope that will be used to study solar flares coming from stars that might have planetary systems.
Understanding those flares is key to understanding whether an orbiting planet might have an atmosphere that could sustain life.
SPARKS was built and is operated at the Arizona State University.
It launched in January.
Ground controllers have now checked out its instruments and say it's ready to start making scientific measurements.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
Lunar Trailblazer launched successfully on February 26th last year.
But shortly after launch, it was clear something was wrong with the power system.
The NASA review found a glaring error.
Software that was supposed to point the spacecraft's solar panels towards the sun instead pointed them 180 degrees away from the sun.
The panel said other software flaws made it impossible to recover from the pointing error.
The review cited management deficiencies at both Lockheed Martin, the company that built the spacecraft, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for failing to catch the problems before launch.
Lockheed and NASA both said they had learned lessons and would do better in future.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
Lunar Trailblazer launched successfully on February 26th last year.
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