Five minutes at the end of each week explores the big and the small questions in astronomy, cosmology, and space science. Hosted by Kechil Kirkham, no subject is too big or too small, and experts are regularly brought on board to illuminate and excite. Cape Town is the place to be for astronomy, with some of the largest telescopes in the world housed or being built not too far away. Looking Up takes advantage of the shoals of scientists and engineers working on the planet’s most advanced astronomy projects, who live and work right here in the Mother City. Kechil has recently acquired an MPhil in Space Studies at the University of Cape Town, and works in South Africa’s space industry on the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.
The European and Japanese space agencies have sent craft Bepicolombo to investigate Mercury, and after 3 years it's arrived. Kechil describes somethin...
NASA is to soon launch a new mission called Lucy to examine the Trojan asteroids which circle around Jupiter. It's a 12-year mission, and will find ou...
Dr Sudanshu Barway, formerly of the South African Astronomical Observatory and now at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, talks about an extraordina...
A new gravitational wave detector has observed a couple of wobbles. Is this some new exotic phenomenon in deep space or is it something going on in th...
What is SpaceX up to now? Well at this moment a crew of 4 is hurtling around planet Earth to raise money for a children's hospital, among other things...
Advertising in space! Continuing with the theme of controversial projects in space, Kechil interviews Dr Francois Malan about one particular project. ...
In this series on controversial topics, Kechil talks to Being Green's John Richards about energy from space. It is theoretically possible to beam ener...