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
Ground controllers don't know why the probes stopped transmitting.
Efforts to regain contact had to be suspended late last year because for two weeks, the orbits of Earth and Mars positioned them on opposite sides of the sun, making radio transmission impossible.
Engineers are still studying the last signals from MAVEN, trying to figure out what went wrong.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
If the orbit of the Earth around the Sun were a perfect circle, then the two bodies would always be the same distance apart.
But Earth's orbit is elliptical, a very slightly squashed circle, meaning every year there's a single time when it's closest and another when it's furthest away.
But even if it were circular, there would still be seasons.
That's because the Earth is tilted away from straight up and down in its orbit.
The tilt is significant, 23 degrees.
In winter, the North Pole points away from the sun, and in summer, towards the sun.
Longer time bathed in sunlight does more to explain changes in temperature than slight changes in distance.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
If the orbit of the Earth around the sun were a perfect circle, then the two bodies would always be the same distance apart.
But Earth's orbit is elliptical, a very slightly squashed circle, meaning every year there's a single time when it's closest and another when it's furthest away.
But even if it were circular, there would still be seasons.
That's because the Earth is tilted away from straight up and down in its orbit.
The tilt is significant, 23 degrees.
In winter, the North Pole points away from the Sun, and in summer, towards the Sun.
Longer time bathed in sunlight does more to explain changes in temperature than slight changes in distance.
For NPR News, I'm Joe Palka.
Showing 121–140 of 237 · page 7 of 12
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