NASA

This year, the rocket company SpaceX is beginning a new series of launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, and a student project from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo is scheduled to be on board SpaceX's new ridesharing program to space.

On this week’s episode of Issues & Ideas: we hear from three different San Luis Obispo groups focused on helping those under the age of 40 get more civically engaged. SLOu40, the SLO Scoop and YPNG are all working to provide community engagement for the under-40 set. 

When NASA’s InSight mission to Mars took off from the Central Coast’s Vandenberg Air Force Base six months ago, two little satellites piggybacked along for the ride. They’re called CubeSats, and they’re about the size of briefcases. Cal Poly students in San Luis Obispo had a hand in their departure from earth and the data they are sending back from Mars.

NASA successfully launched a spacecraft to Mars from Vandenberg Air Force base on Saturday. It was the first ever interplanetary launch from the West Coast, and if all goes according to plan, just before Thanksgiving the Insight mission will land on Mars and begin drilling down into the surface. The mission's goal? To learn more about how rocky planets form.

If you wake up early this coming Saturday and look to the north, or the south - depending where you on are on the Central Coast - you may see history in the making. 

NASA has scuttled a spacecraft circling the planet Saturn and its moons for the past 13 years. The Cassini mission ended around 4 a.m. Friday when the spacecraft purposely steered into Saturn’s atmosphere and disintegrated in a fiery blaze. A scientist working on the Cassini mission is giving a free public talk this weekend at Cal Poly on the mission and the marvels it revealed.

Several agencies at Vandenberg Air Force base are preparing to launch a satellite Sunday that will measure the effects of climate change on the world's oceans. 

 Victor Glover is a Cal Poly Alumnus and a NASA astronaut. 

A former Cal Poly professor is among the lead team members as NASA prepares to enter a historic orbit Friday morning of a dwarf planet. 

The Dawn spacecraft launched in 2007 is studying the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe Ceres was on its way to becoming a full-sized planet... but had its development interrupted by Jupiter's gravity.