I’m Anthony Colangelo.

With just a single weekend remaining between us and Artemis 1, Jake and Anthony pregame the launch, mission, and meetups, and talk about the Artemis program overall.

Jonathan Barlow from the NASA Ames Research Center joins me to talk about Astrobee—the free-flying robots on the International Space Station that test new technologies, sensors, and operations, and assist astronauts and mission controllers alike. Jonathan is the Astrobee Lead Engineer and has been with the program since the beginning, so we go way back to its origins and talk in-depth about what the robots are up to today on the ISS.

Northrop Grumman and Firefly announced a partnership to develop a new first stage for Antares—the same first stage that will power Firefly’s larger launch vehicle, Beta. It’s a great partnership for both parties that will surely lead to more interesting things in the future.

Mike Loucks and John Carrico of Space Exploration Engineering join me to talk about astrogation, mission planning, missions they’ve worked on, how they interact with teams of all types, and everything else they do at SEE.

Rick Mastracchio, former NASA astronaut and current Director Of Business Development at Northrop Grumman Space Systems, joins me to talk about Northrop Grumman’s Commercial Space Station concept that they are working on as part of NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations program.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Gary Jordan, NASA Public Affairs Officer and host of the official podcast of Johnson Space Center, “Houston We Have a Podcast.”

Dr. Justin Walsh, co-PI of the International Space Station Archaeological Project, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about how to do archaeology on a space station and what they’re up to on the ISS.

Anthony is joined by Christian Davenport of The Washington Post and Loren Grush of The Verge to talk about Loren’s JWST birthday present, Artemis 1 getting its initial launch dates, the occasional Long March 5B reentry, and everything else that has been going on in the world of space news.

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is in a tricky spot right now. VIPER has been delayed a year, new task orders are being awarded to new teams like the one led by Draper, and Masten is all but dead.

Some thoughts on where we are now that Dmitry Rogozin has been dismissed as head of Roscosmos, and that NASA and Roscosmos have signed a seat exchange agreement for future flights to the ISS.