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My gravity assist was my village.

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You always hear, you know, “it
takes a village to raise a child.”

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When I was about five years old,
I went to the

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planetarium in London
and it just completely opened my mind.

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I was nine years old
when Apollo 11 landed, and I'll never,

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ever forget watching.

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A gravity assist is
when a spacecraft gets a boost of speed

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as it flies by an object
like Earth or Jupiter.

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But I also like to talk about gravity
assist as an inspirational boost.

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It's that person, place, thing,
or event that propels

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people into the careers
that they have today.

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Hi, I'm Jim Green.

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And after five fantastic years

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as I have retired from the role
of the NASA Chief Scientist,

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NASA's Gravity
Assist podcast is coming to a close.

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I'm so grateful to you, the listeners,
for coming on this

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journey with me to tour the solar system
and beyond,

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to investigate the moon,
to search for life beyond Earth.

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And of course, to interview
those that are doing the discoveries

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that we are every day.

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You know, for this special final episode,
we're going to talk about

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some of the highlights,
some gravity assist

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in some of our NASA
memories of how we pulled these off.

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Now, it's
not only me that made these things happen.

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And as you know, that takes a team.

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And that team is Liz
Landau and Manny Cooper,

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and they're here with me
to talk about the success that we've had

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and the workings
that needed to make this such

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a success
behind the scenes at Gravity Assist.

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So welcome, Liz and Manny.

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Thanks to. Thanks, Jim. Glad to be here.

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And it's really

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hard to choose favorite episodes
or even favorite gravity assists.

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But what I thought I'd do
is, is have a chat with

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with Liz and Manny
about what our favorites are.

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So without further ado, Liz,

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what are your favorite episodes
in Gravity Assist?

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Oh my gosh, Jim, it's so hard to choose.

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I mean, it's been such
an incredible journey to learn about

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the solar system and beyond,
but especially some of the episodes

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in the astrobiology
season were really compelling to me.

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You know, people
going out to learn about Antarctica,

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finding out that there is life everywhere
you look, even

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in the most extreme conditions on Earth
as well as people

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looking at exoplanets for signs of life
and how we might do that.

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Ravi Kopparupu at Goddard,
I really enjoyed that episode,

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he talked about the possibility of could
we even find pollution on an exoplanet?

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That's just so wild.

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We can't make this show happen
without our audio engineer, Manny Cooper.

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Manny, what's what are some of the
episodes that really stand out for you?

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There are a couple of episodes
that really resonate with me.

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The first one is the What is

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Mars Sound Like episode with Nina Lanza.

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That was really cool.

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You know,

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especially being an audio engineer
and getting to listen to sounds on Mars,

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the Ingenuity
helicopter off in the distance,

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and then the metallic wheels
on Perseverance, you know, rolling along.

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Can we hear the wind on Mars?

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We can.

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And you know, in many ways,
it sounds like the wind on Earth,

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but in other ways it doesn't.

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So maybe we can take a listen.

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Yeah, let's do that.

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Another one
was the Listening to the Universe,

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the Kim Arcand
episode was really interesting too.

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She worked with an engineer
to compose musical pieces.

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Yeah, Kim's data sonification are amazing.

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Let me play you
a clip from one of those.

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This is a very classic image.

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It's of course, our home galaxy.

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We're looking at the inner
about 400 lightyear region around

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the supermassive black hole Sagittarius
A star at the very core of the Milky Way.

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Episodes that I

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really like are those that
come with a surprise.

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When Catherine Walker talked about how

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she almost fell through a glacier,

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I mean, my heart stopped.

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You know, another one that I really liked

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was Sunny Panjwani, who he was

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in the JSC control room

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when the Russian module called Science
was just connected

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to the International Space Station,
and one of the rockets turned on.

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And that started
the entire space station to spin.

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It was just surreal

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being there my first day and feeling
like I was still stuck in the simulation.

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It really taught me that our training
is there to push us to our limits again.

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And and sometimes, you know,

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you just you're sitting there
and you can't believe what's happening,

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but you're calm and you're collected
and you're ready to work the problem.

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I would go as far as to say
that this entire process has been

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like my gravity assist.

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Yeah, I really feel the same way
and that it is really one of my favorite

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things that I've ever worked on
to be able to be a fly on the wall

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and listen to Jim Green
talk to such an amazing range of people,

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and to learn about the possibilities
of what is out there.

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We do hope that all of our audience out
there

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has been inspired by this show
in some way, shape or form.

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But you can also find out
so many other great NASA podcasts

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by going to nasa.gov/podcasts.

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And in particular,
check out things like the Curious Universe

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for which more great stories
about the agency are being discussed.

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I'm Jim Green, and this has been your