Blue Dot Radio
Let the Bluet Dot podcast take you to the outer reaches of the Solar System and beyond. Host Sarah AI-Ahmed visits with scientists, engineers, mission leaders, astronauts, advocates, and writers who provide their unique and exciting perspectives on the exploration of our universe.
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2025 NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium: Part 2 - Hopping robots and the search for exoplanet magnetospheres
Planetary Radio continues its coverage from the 2025 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium in Philadelphia, highlighting technologies that could shape future missions, from detecting exoplanet magnetospheres to exploring Venus and Saturn’s moon Enceladus with innovative robots.
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Book Club Edition: Space Craze by Margaret Weitekamp
Space Craze author Margaret Weitekamp of the National Air and Space Museum documents our fascination with all things space, as evidenced by the pop culture artifacts she lovingly oversees in the collection.
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2025 NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium: Part I - Lunar glass and starshades
Planetary Radio explores visionary ideas from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium. In this first of two episodes, discover how researchers are turning science fiction into reality, from glass habitats on the Moon to starshades that could reveal new Earths.
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A Day of Action to save NASA science
Hundreds of advocates joined The Planetary Society and partner organizations in Washington, D.C., to urge Congress to protect NASA’s science budget. Hear from Ari Koeppel, Britney Schmidt, Bill Nye, Rep. Glenn Ivey, Marcel Agüeros, Brandon Jones, and Casey Dreier about this historic Day of Action.
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Space Policy Edition: China's growing space science ambitions
If the United States is indeed in a space race with China, why are we abandoning space science programs across the Solar System? This question, posed by guest Maxwell Zhu in a recent op-ed co-authored by The Planetary Society’s chief of space policy, reveals the current myopia around human spaceflight and the missing focus on a growing and ambitious new entrant into space science in the 21st century.
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Perseverance finds potential biosignatures in Jezero Crater
NASA’s Perseverance rover has found potential biosignatures in Jezero Crater’s Bright Angel formation. Host Sarah Al-Ahmed speaks with Joel Hurowitz, associate professor of geosciences at Stony Brook University and lead author of the new Nature paper, about this remarkable discovery.
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Bill Nye: A star in Hollywood, a voice for NASA
Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, celebrates his new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and joins us to reflect on its meaning. We also receive the latest space policy updates as NASA faces significant budget challenges.
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Book Club Edition: Cosmos Award - winning author Dava Sobel
Author and historian of science Dava Sobel talks about her many wonderful books with The Planetary Society’s Mat Kaplan. Dava recently received the Society’s Cosmos Award.
Radio Host
Sarah AI-Ahmed is the host of the Radio. Her childhood passion for science fiction and astronomy set her on a lifelong mission to share her love of space with the world. Now she is living her dream as the host and producer.
Sarah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley. After some time as a data-taker for a supernova research team using instruments at Lick Observatory in Mt. Hamilton, California, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in science communication. Sarah spent six years as a museum guide, writer, and show producer at the historic Griffith Observatory. She was a monthly contributor to Griffith Observer magazine and a content creator for All Space Considered, the observatory’s monthly astronomy news program.